Stock Photography Museum

Exhibit 1.5.1

2012-01-25T10:58:00.005-06:00

Weather

So apparently Houston is going to flood (again) and we're all going to die (again). This is too bad as flooding doesn't even rank on my list of terrible weather disasters I would hope to kill me. The list:

1. Tornado - Always chance it just transports me ala Zelda, Mario, and every other story about tornadoes.

2. Blizzard - Could have a cool story about how I got lost and walked in a huge circle when I thought I was going straight. Also, future people might discover my frozen corpse just outside a Casey's General Store and speculate about my living habits based on my sweatpants and Museum of Jurassic Technology t-shirt.

That's really pretty much it. It must be the Plains in me, but everything else just seems foreign and weird.

Hurricanes - Have eyes.
Floods - What did we do to god this time?
Mudslides - Applebee's drink.
Tsunami - Scary, but unlikely to come from the Platte River.
Earthquakes - Only exist in sitcoms where a pregnant character rides an elevator.
Wildfires - Actually, I can see dying in a wildfire. That's sort of Plains-y. Not grain silo explosion Plains-y but four wheeler accident Plains-y.

Exhibit 1.4.27

2012-01-20T15:55:00.007-06:00

The Flasher

So The Flasher is now for available for pre-order from SpringGun Press. There's free shipping and all that, too. Go check it--and the other, awesomer books--out.

Mostly I just wanted to show off the cover. I love it.

Exhibit 1.4.26

2012-01-18T08:55:00.003-06:00

Black Out

If anyone asks, this blog hasn't been updating because of SOPA.

Exhibit 1.4.25

2012-01-11T09:37:00.006-06:00

"The story has by now acquired the status of legend
among those in the disposable office supply industry."

Lorraine Nelson:
A Biography in Post-It Notes

By David Hawkins
Now Available

1 tape-bound volume
Book Design by Todd Seabrook

$15/year subscription, $5/individual

Selected by Michael Martone as the winner of The Cupboard’s first-ever contest.

*ABOUT THE VOLUME*
There are ghosts who have never died. David Hawkins's Lorraine Nelson: A Biography in Post-it Notes is about such a person or maybe two such people. A mysterious name. A terrible job. The drudgery of the office makes ghosts of many, but can be survived with wit, imagination, and heart. Lorraine Nelson never lived, but in this volume, selected by Michael Martone as the winner of The Cupboard's first contest, she's given the elegy she deserves.

Of the volume, Martone writes that "it's made up of surprising but complex asides, elaborated and compacted articulations that scale beautifully into a durable and brilliant skin, a chain mail of associative links and leaps. The language is massive and minute, mute and malleable. The whole piece performs the paradox, recombining the airy ephemeral with an adhesive that does, in fact, stick."

Read an excerpt here.

*ABOUT THE AUTHOR*
David Hawkins's poetry and nonfiction have received awards from the Utah Arts Council and have appeared in a number of journals and periodicals. He is an assistant professor/lecturer at the University of Utah where he was the editor-in-chief of Quarterly West from 2001 to 2005, and he lives in Salt Lake City with his wife and their two boys. He still pulls the occasional crappy job.

*SUBSCRIBE*
Every year brings four new Cupboards. Collect them all for $15 here.

Individual volumes, including past volumes from Amanda Goldblatt, Andrew Borgstrom, Anne Marie Rooney, and Ryan Call and James Scott are available for $5.

* SUBMIT*
As always, subscribers are invited to submit prose between 4,000 and 8,000 words through our Submishmash site here.

Open submissions will return in the summer. But…

!CONTEST!
Everyone is invited to submit to The Cupboard’s Second-Ever Contest. This year’s contest will be judged by Maud Casey, author of The Shape of Things to Come, Genealogy, and Drastic.

Submissions will be open between February 1st and March 31st. We're looking for prose submissions between 4k and 10k words of short stories, essays, collections of flash fiction and prose poems, and combinations thereof.

The winning author will receive $500 and the manuscript will be published as an upcoming volume. Submissions are received and read anonymously, and all submissions are eligible for regular publication. We again plan on offering contest submitters a discounted submission to The Cupboard.

Look for more details and an official announcement on February 1st.

*OUR NEXT VOLUME*
The next volume of the Cupboard is by Chanelle Benz and will debut at AWP this spring. Look for us in the Table X section again sharing a table with Octopus Books.

Thank you again for everything,

THE CUPBOARD

www.thecupboardpamphlet.org

Exhibit 1.4.24

2011-12-22T11:29:00.012-06:00

Review of the Plains States' Shapes

Look, I don't want to get into a big thing here about what is and is not a Plains state. These are the Plains states as far as this exercise is concerned. Does it make any sense that Iowa is one but Minnesota isn't? No, no it doesn't. And what about Eastern Colorado? Well, since Colorado pretends there's no Eastern Colorado, we will too. But what is Eastern Wyoming if not the Plains? Why it's a desolate dust and despair factory we'd all be better off without.

So in no particular order:

Oklahoma

Okay, so Oklahoma is pretty cool looking. This brings us to our first and probably only real conclusion from this exercise: panhandles are cool. Unless they're Florida's. Then they're the worst. But otherwise: cool.

Oklahoma also has the jagged lower edge which sort of makes it look like a whisky jug God broke and is using to fight off Texas. And by sort of I mean: this is happening.

South Dakota

The best thing about South Dakota is that little Minnesota tumor on the eastern border. I don't think any of us would be surprised to wake up twenty years from now to look at a map and find the tumor had metastasized to cover most of the Black Hills.

I'm really not sure how in that metaphor Minnesota became cancer while South Dakota became an otherwise healthy body. There is nothing healthy about South Dakota except its appetite for the distasteful.

North Dakota

Or Kansas. Who the hell knows. Let's just say that if this outline came up on a geography test, the answers would range from "Ontario" to "The capital of Oregon is Salem."

Nebraska

I could talk about how Nebraska's shape is the country's best fusion of natural geography, history, and panhandle, but that would be to ignore that the greatest achievement of Nebraska's shape is that it somehow connotes motion while the state itself remains stuck in 1938. And eastward motion at that.

I mean, it's a great shape, but it sort of does look like the entire state is a 1992 Chevy Lumina minivan hoping to take a permanent vacation outside Virginia.

Kansas

Nope, wait, this is Kansas. You can tell because if you go east enough you find some personality.

(As a Western Kansan, even I'm offended).

I know a guy who has a tattoo of Kansas on one arm and a tattoo of Oklahoma on the other (presumably to let everyone know he hasn't so much lived places as he has lost a fight against luck) and the tattoo of Oklahoma is instantly recognizable. The tattoo of Kansas, however, was a hand spasm away from being Colorado. My thought is, if you need to add tiny wheat fields and tornadoes and Judy Garland to make your tattoo recognizable, you were probably better off just getting Danny Manning's face. Which, by the way, would make for an excellent state itself:I say, we carve out this shape in the middle of Kansas, give the rest of the land away, and tell the Missouri River we're not going to pushed around by its whims anymore.

Iowa

This, actually, might just be Danny Manning's face in profile. I don't know. It's just a good thing Kansas and Iowa don't share a border because otherwise, we might have trouble. Danny Manning-related trouble.

Iowa is rightly proud of being the face in the Mississippi's dumpy little person though as a child I always thought that person was probably Chef Boyardee. This didn't dampen my enthusiasm any, just made me slightly disappointed when I moved to Iowa it wasn't full of ravioli but fervent Ron Paul supporters.

Let's face it though, Iowa is basically Ohio turned on its side and told to keep quiet unless it has something to say about John Wayne.

Exhibit 1.4.23

2011-12-13T10:16:00.005-06:00

The French

So I accidentally typed in the French address for Amazon.com (amazone.com, apparently) and this was the product splashed all over the homepage:

What exactly are they planning?

Exhibit 1.4.22

2011-12-12T22:18:00.004-06:00

Thoughts on the Dolphins Firing Tony Sparano

Because I'm either going to tell you like this or I'm going to tell you when you want to talk about politics or books or something. It's better this way.

It's better this way, this firing. Sparano is a good guy, by all accounts, and a good coach by my estimation. He could be a great coach in the right situation. Will he ever get that chance again? I don't know. I sort of doubt it given the names out there and the fact that he's never been an NFL offensive coordinator or (officially) a play caller. Seems like he either gets a head coaching job this year (unlikely) or signs up as an offensive line coach somewhere at which point he's at the back of the line for a head coaching gig. It could still happen for him (I mean, it happened to Chan Gailey) but I'd say the odds are 70/30 against.

Which is too bad because despite the conservative nature of his Dolphins teams--something I could live with if it didn't so often come long after there was nothing to lose--Sparano's players seemed to love him which is a rare thing in a coach that's not "soft." He's not a tyrant in the Coughlin school nor is he an absentee in the Caldwell school--instead he's the rare disciplinarian whose players respect him and played tough and smart and focused long after they would have tuned the Coughlins of the world out or realized Caldwell was an empty suit. With more talent, he could have been Coughlin or even better, I think. That's not to diminish Coughlin, just that I think a lot of coaches would lose a team after an 0-7 start and Sparano never did. Hell, they seemed to play harder for him once they realized they were getting him fired.

Sparano's loyalty did him in as much as anything which is terrible considering how little loyalty the front office showed him. But maybe his ceiling was reached, that's certainly possible. At some point, you've got to not only play correctly but you've got to play smarter and there wasn't much about Sparano's gameplans that suggested this was going to happen. A run-first, physical team will probably win again in the NFL, but it's not an accident that the Patriots, Packers, Colts, Saints, and Steelers have dominated the last decade. Even the Steelers, arguably the only team that fit the Sparano model, have gone away from the running game and opened up the offense. For better or worse, it's what the game is now, and only at the urging of the owner did Sparano even begin to move in this direction.

He ultimately didn't have the time or the personnel to take the team there, but there've been a lot of positive signs these past few weeks. Sparano made them look like they were a few players away but are they? I don't know. They've got one more hole now, and if they're sincere about Tony having been a good coach--and I think they should be--then they're going to have to do better than good.

But so far a lot of the names getting thrown around only make me think, Hey, Tony Sparano is available. Let's go get him.

Exhibit 1.4.21

2011-12-07T13:28:00.004-06:00

In Which I Pretend to Live Blog an MRI

0:00 - O, I've done this before, nice man who put a warm blanket over me, no worries. Yes, please, strap my head down. I shouldn't be able to move. I'm not worthy of that responsibility.

0:01 - I hope some kind of Walking Dead scenario isn't happening outside.

0:03 - Some kind of Walking Dead scenario is definitely happening outside.

0:05 - Think, Adam, you can escape from this tube. There's got to be more than one exit.

0:06 - I'm going to die.

0:06:30 - Ahhhhhhhhhhh!

0:07 - Eh, screw it. I'm probably not going to die. [starts thinking about fantasy football]

0:10 - "Try not to swallow."

0:11/12/13/14/15 - [swallows]

0:20 - My favorite magnet cycle is the one that sounds like an old-timey typewriter from a newsreel.

0:21 - "Dateline, this tube. Look out, Mussolini, Uncle Sam's boys aren't crying anymore and have their swallowing problem on the run."

0:30 - I wish Fred Jackson and Matt Forte were still alive. I mean, to me.

0:40 - O, hi, nice man who put a warm blanket over me, just another hour? Why not make it two? Because screw Mussolini.

1:00 - "Baby, when I'm with you, it's like you're the MRI machine and I'm the injured high school sports star." - something John Updike probably thought.

1:01 - Can I tweet that?

1:02 - Na, probably not.

1:03 - But I can blog it. Totally.

1:10 - And emotionally I skipped from bored right past heroic and am back to fear.

1:12 - The zombies would probably just eat my legs but then I'd be a zombie and would totally have dibs on this nice livin' tube.

1:14 - I hope after this I get to stand in a long coffee line with a bunch of young doctors to remind myself that most of the doctors I know got into it because they really liked Grey's Anatomy and wanted to drive a Mercedes. I will? Great.

1:20 - Story idea: "Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, beep."

1:22 - Sudden urge to fight tube.

1:23 - Is that as hard as you can hit magnets?

1:24 - O, I assumed it's just take your daughter to work day. Little Olive is doing great.

1:30 - This one again? Great, no, I mean, I wouldn't want to be a huge one note cliche, but if you want to be Joe Cocker...

1:31 - No, I'm sure you're very advanced, but there's no getting around the fact that you're made by a company that builds electric razors.

1:40 - I don't know disembodied voice of the nice man who put a warm blanket over me, sometimes I think I have gone crazy.

1:45 - I'm moving! It's over!

1:46 - Nope, just moved down a little. Now back. Now down. It's just screwing with me. Shouldn't have brought up Joe Cocker.

1:50 - MRI machines would be cooler if at the end they just dumped you inside themselves into a portal where you ended up waiting for an Americano next to a high-pitched girl in scrubs telling her friend she never gets to go out anymore. Not because that would be so great but because it would make the experience more like Mario.

2:00 - I think the MRI ended ten minutes ago and I didn't notice.

2:01 - I should have stolen those socks as a memento.

12:38 - My god, I think, I think I love the tube.

Exhibit 1.4.20

2011-12-06T15:19:00.006-06:00

Things

* There's a new NOÖ Weekly available right here edited by Laura Eve Engel. I have a thing in it about being pope or something. It's unclear. But it's a fantastic issue anyway which you should check out.

* There's also a cool prose poem made out of lines from all the pieces at the NOÖ blog here.

* So these YouTube "Hitler reacts to ____________" things are more than a little tired at this point, but I have to give it up to the Royals fan who put this one together about the Royals signing Jonathan Broxton. It's really funny, all the more so if you're a Royals fan who enjoys jokes about those hydraulic adaptor commercials that blanket all the radio broadcasts.

* If you're not that--and statistically the odds of you being that are quite small--it's still got plenty of that nutty Hitler.

* I also have a couple of Sire (on)Lines in the new Jet Fuel Review. These are about the internet and Wal-Mart which, as you might imagine, put them in the latter portions of the manuscript despite my initial intention to call the project Sam Walton: Made in America and have it sold for $8.88 at over 7,000 retail locations worldwide.

Exhibit 1.4.19

2011-12-03T11:34:00.005-06:00

O Gmail

I got these ads because, as best I can tell, the email thread contained the words "Old Woman," "Dress," and "Underwater."

Or it knows.

Exhibit 1.4.18

2011-11-28T13:14:00.005-06:00

A Primer on the Rules of Cricket, Pt. 4

31. The bowler shall be allotted one villain. The villain shall be allotted one nemesis. The nemesis shall be allotted one savior. The savior is allotted nothing. None of these parties shall be allowed in the stadium nor made aware of the game of cricket under penalty of scheming.

32. Tuesday, being The Duke's day, shall be skipped in matches that go on longer than the time between an orphans breakfasts and all subsequent days reordered and renumbered in perpetuity or until the fifth ninth Monday of eighth September.

33. The gambling of shoes is required with the terms secured and held by a foreign national equipped with the proper deity and without want of a castle. Shoes shall be held in the castle with separate keeps to segregate the jodhpurs from the paddocks.

34. Upon the retirement of the butler, his wife shall be made aware of the affair.

35. After assessing the temperament of the bees, any player stung unduly shall be within his rights to engage a barrister and seek recompense from the opposing player nearest the bee at the time of trial.

36. Should fruit be provided oranges are not to be served until the conclusion of the most recent kerfuffle with the Boers.

37. The scuffle with the Boers shall never truly conclude.

38. In the yellow wicket a player may charge the officiate with "Possession" at which time the player will have three attempts to name the demon. Success earns the player the wizard's hat. Failure and the wizard gets to hold the player by the hand and walk him off.

39. The failure to exclaim "That's a feisty bowl of pudding!" after a particularly spectacular woogly results in the whip with no consideration given to the condemned's spleen.

40. Spectacularity is to be determined by the dowager whose whimsy is least beyond reproach. Regardless of the dowager, during the cascades, players are required to say "That's a feisty bowl of pudding!" in the ratio of sparrows to farthings.

Exhibit 1.4.17

2011-11-25T15:40:00.005-06:00

Things I Hope People at This Coffeeshop Are Thinking About Me

* Wow, a Macbook. He must be doing art not updating his fantasy football team.

* Wow, a Macbook and iPod, he's stylish yet independent in a way we, with our totally purchased just to conform Macbooks, can only aspire to be.

* That probably isn't the J. Geil's Band we're hearing from his headphones.

* Let's bother him in this small, 2-hour window we have before he starts grading that stack of papers.

* I bet he's an individual who has thoughts on Barthes's Writing Degree Zero and thus making him write about it would be pointless. We'll tell everyone.

* He's in law school.

* I bet he snuck some whiskey into that double-caramel caramel macchiato because he just looks like that sort of guy.

* He probably doesn't want to talk about the Kansas City Royals, but I'm going to ask anyway just in case.

* His computer is angled slightly away so it will be impossible for us to read his short story which we were totally going to do if given a more advantageous angle by which we might have experienced his work that the world is apparently not ready for yet (geometrically speaking).

* Hard to believe someone with such a carefully curated homeless look doesn't have somewhere better to be at 1:30 on a Wednesday.

* Look at the way he doesn't even look up when people are walking by. He's really locked in...O, nope, he's staring at us.

Exhibit 1.4.16

2011-11-18T11:29:00.004-06:00

Things

* So, um, it's been awhile. How about that.

* I had a long post on the Penn State scandal written up, but I decided not to post it. There is absolutely nothing else to say about that.

* Literally, the only thing to say is that it's terrible and then shut up.

* Check out the new Wigleaf for some amazing stamp stories, including one from me that's about, I don't know, pilgrims or something. Who knows. What I do know is that the others are awesome and that I'm very happy to be there among them.

* Anyway, it's a very cool issue and a very cool concept. You should definitely buy the book from Mud Luscious here. Do it.

* This new Drake album is The Weeknd's best album ever.

* Maybe I like the Childish Gambino album better, but nothing on there is as good as "Freaks and Geeks."

* Fantasy football update: The Cal Drogo and Mike Kafkaesque are both in 2nd place.

* Grading update: I'm not doing it. I'm doing this.

* I'm barely doing this.

Exhibit 1.4.15

2011-11-04T13:03:00.010-05:00

Tattoo Ideas for Someone Else Sorted by Decreasing Likelihood

W.A.S.T.E. symbol

Retweet Icon

Alfred Hitchcock Presents on Lower Stomach

Dino from the Flintstones Playing an Upright Bass

Sitar Diagram

Sheet music for "Up Where We Belong"

Facebook Homepage Which Will Never Ever Change

Exhibit 1.4.14

2011-10-26T19:13:00.008-05:00

Checking In

Let's see what's going on in my old hometown these days...

O for god's sake. This is terrible!

East Fifth does not need new pavement.

Exhibit 1.4.13

2011-10-21T15:20:00.010-05:00

Stock Photography Review
Sadsack Businessmen

To honor Mathias Svalina's I Am a Very Productive Entrepreneur--and at the long ago suggestion of one Jimmy Stockham--here are some some sadsack businessmen. But first, you should be sure to pick up Mathias's book which is amazing and entrepreneurial and portable and here. I read it months ago and my favorites have stuck with me long after I should have been paying attention to other things like teaching or writing or whatever it is I do.

"Things are going to get better, Robert, things are going to get better. You've got French cuffs and this is going to be okay."

"Makeup can make my cheeks shine, my lips pop, and my hair porcupine, but it can't make Vanessa come back."

"Why did I start a private architecture library? Nobody went to the one at school and nobody is going to this one either. I don't even know what an architecture library is."

"When they find me, I'll have to say something cute like 'I've got motherboard issues.' Not the truth, not yet."

"More like a notary sad."

"When there was only one set of footprints, it was because I was claiming you as a dependent."

"Dress for the job you want, they said, but I'm still here at the front desk and no closer to that handjob."

"Hey, Cindy. Cindy! Are you having emotions?"

"Okay, keep it together. She might still want to buy the steak knives. What was her name? Vanessa something?"

"I hope it's a nice day outside and not one of those this-hellish-white-landscape-is-a-metaphor-for-how-I'm-dying-inside days. O, goddamnit."

"Every year I find a way to ruin the company Christmas party, and firing everyone to hire Prince to perform may have been the best way yet."

"Stay calm, Robert, this is happening. We always knew it would. O God. Think of the cuffs."

Bonus! Submit your own caption for this one in the comments:

And don't forget to buy Mathias's book at SPD.

Exhibit 1.4.12

2011-10-14T11:47:00.004-05:00

How I Know My Phone Is Dying

* Keeps launching Pandora on the Warren Zevon station

* Only works on speakerphone so that god can hear its cries

* Like a Grandpa in the old folks home, no longer recognizes grandchildren/car charger

* Shows complete apathy over whether or not it's on ringer, vibrate

* Calls you in my pocket so you can decide

* Clock only updates when unlocked, phone only unlocked when someone needs me hence--also like grandpa in the old folks home--thinks it's Tuesday, September 24, 1978

* This doesn't explain why it now receives text messages by Pony Express

* It was made by a company that has been bought, spun off, and no longer exists

* It still exists, but only that--nothing more

Anyway, I'm sorry to see it go. It was a good phone.

Exhibit 1.4.11

2011-10-10T11:38:00.004-05:00

Today in Confusing Stock Photography

O, The Huffington Post. You're the world's number one purveyor of slideshows about bad stock photography and bad stock photography.

Also, not so good at the irony.

Exhibit 1.4.10

2011-10-06T21:40:00.003-05:00

Wok

I need you to know that I now own a wok.

It's like my best friend.

I call it Wok-uin Phoenix.

My fridge is full of leftover noodle and rice dishes.

Sometimes I season the wok just for fun.

I say the word patina a lot.

I don't blog.

I keep hoping lightning will hit a tree so I can carve a wok paddle out of it.

When I'm watching baseball and here the word "walk" I get up and make stirfry.

I nod at Asians.

I judge people based on the amount of fish sauce they have.

I think about whether or not fish have woks.

I'm already thinking about buying a better wok.

I'd name this one River Phoenix.

I couldn't do that to my wok.

Exhibit 1.4.9

2011-10-02T10:13:00.004-05:00

Royals Season Review

Blog crossover! So fellow fiction writer, Nebraskan, and Royals fan Theodore Wheeler asked me if I'd like to trade some questions about this Kansas City Royals, and I of course said yes. Talking about the Royals is one of my favorite things to do in the world, ranking somewhere between eating French Toast and talking about eating French Toast.

For those of you not paying attention to this season in Royals baseball--which, according to my math, is all of humanity minus about 100 people currently inside an Arthur Bryant's--the Royals finished up the year 71-91 which was good enough for 4th place in the AL Central, besting only the lowly, lowly Twins (let's not take the time to remember my Royals season preview in which I predicted the Twins to win the central).

Buried in another miserable record, however, were real signs of hope, mostly centered around an improving offense led by a resurgent Alex Gordon, career years from a couple of fan-hated castoffs, and, of course, the long awaited arrival of some of the best prospects in baseball. The Royals ended the season looking like a team ready to compete for the division as early as next season and, indeed, advance stats have them as the second best team in the division already with a lot more talent on the way.

Are the Royals finally legit? I don't know. Ted might. I asked him. Below are my questions to Ted and his answers.

You can find my answers to his questions at Ted's site The Uninitiated right here.

Adam: What does 2012 look like for the Royals? There’s certainly a sense of excitement around the team now that the season is ending that wasn’t there in June when the losses mounted, the rookies struggled, and the farm system fell back to Earth. Is this just a September mirage made possible by journeymen and young guys filling out 40-man rosters or are these performances real? I guess the question is this: can this team compete for the division in 2012 or are they a year (or more) away?

Ted: The Royals have made a September surge an annual event in the last decade, so I’m inclined to be skeptical of the results of late. However, I expected Hosmer, Moustakas, and Perez to play well—so maybe seeing is believing at this point. I do think the Royals have a chance to compete for the division in 2012, although a lot of that optimism comes from the fact that they play in the AL Central. The Tigers probably have a couple more years in their run (Verlander has to regress at some point, right?), but I’m not all that scared by anyone else. The Indians have a chance to be good, yet they had a lot of guys playing out of their minds this season, and still finished as a mediocre team. Although it won’t be as bad as it has this year, the Twins are on a downward slide. And I can’t imagine the White Sox find anyone who can hold all the head-cases on their roster together better than Ozzie Guillen. (Here’s hoping Hal McRae gets another shot. That would be quite a show.) So the Royals will have a shot. From top-to-bottom, I don’t see a huge weakness in the lineup. Both Frenchy and Melky Cabrera will probably regress—but it’s important to remember that 2011 was still just their age 26 and 27 seasons, which is typically when a hitter is at his peak. So it’s possible that they, along with Gordon and Billy Butler, are just settling into the prime of their careers. At the least, with that in mind, I doubt anyone falls off a cliff. Add that to a solid bullpen, and I think the Royals hopes in 2012 all come down to how well the rotation can compete.

A: This year’s starting rotation was, frankly, terrible, and it’s painful to imagine how much worse they would have been without the performance of Felipe Paulino who was picked up for nothing at the end of May. What do you see the Royals doing this offseason and what would you want them to do? Can they count on Paulino to repeat his performance? Will Duffy make a leap? And—I guess we’re still asking this—will Hochevar? A better question: do the Royals currently have anyone in the rotation who they can count on in their long-term plans?

T: This is the factor that can, and probably will, sink the Royals in 2012. Paulino has been a horse this year, and he has the kind of stuff and physical attributes that could lead to an out-of-nowhere special season. I think Duffy will get better, but it will probably be a couple years before he gets comfortable challenging MLB hitters. I’m pretty sure Luke Hochevar is what he is at this point. So we have three maybes, not one you can count on—and it gets a bit darker from there, unfortunately. Moore needs to find a top starter, if not two, if they expect to be a playoff team. That being said, the Royals aren’t going to find anyone on the free agent or trade market who can compete with Justin Verlander pitch for pitch. CJ Wilson would be a great sign, but he’s not coming here. Would Edwin Jackson be worth overpaying for? Or worth risking team chemistry over? Maybe. There may be some interesting prospects on the trade market—Clayton Kershaw, Gio Gonzalez, Dan Haren—but no one knows how that will shake out at this point. And would it be worth it to give up Mike Montgomery and Wil Myers, plus two middling prospects, for two years of a potentially elite starter. Maybe. But Montgomery has a ton of talent—Chuck Finley is the comp I’ve heard the most—and could be that guy himself if he figures some things out this winter.

I’ll hate myself for saying this, but I kind of wish Moore would make a run at signing Mark Buehrle. (And back from a quick shower…) He isn’t a great pitcher anymore, but Buehrle’s influence on the young White Sox pitchers the last few years has been evident. I’d love to see what that kind of veteran influence would do for guys like Duffy and Montgomery. And for Paulino and Hochevar for that matter. I could live with a rotation of Buehrle, Hochevar, Duffy, Paulino, Teaford. Is that a playoff-caliber rotation? (Please hold all derisive laughter.) Of course it isn’t. But maybe it’s good enough to stay in the race until July, if the offense continues produce like it has in the second-half this year, and at that point Moore can go out and get a premier starter. (Zack Greinke anyone?) Or maybe Montgomery could give a surge. 2012 probably won’t be the year that KC makes it back to the playoffs. But if that year is going to come in the next decade, 2012 has to be the year the Royals get used to being in the conversation.

A: So you asked me about the prospects who played this year, but I’m curious about your take on prospects who are still in the system. Obviously this gets tricky as we don’t really see these guys (at least I don’t down in Texas), but my question is this: what prospects who haven’t yet seen the majors do you see having the biggest impact on the team next year? Long-term? Also, is there still enough talent in the system to round out a complete roster or are the Royals going to have to go shopping?

T: The Royals debuted five position players this year, four who are starters, and three who performed pretty well. Seven pitchers have made their debut, with an astounding five rookies with an ERA under 3.65. (Each of the five are bullpen guys.) It’s no surprise that they are the youngest team in the majors, and it isn’t even close. So you couldn’t really blame the Royals if the cupboard was bare. Fortunately, there’s still a ton of quality down on the farm. If anyone does fall off, or get hurt, there’s some depth to fill in. There aren’t a bunch of superstars left, but there are plenty of guys who should be able to hold their own over the course of a month or two if needed. David Lough is a guy who, on Royals teams of the past, probably would have spent most of the year with the big club. Yet, with the organization as it is now, it’s likely that Lough will never see meaningful time with major league squad. That’s great progress. There’s no reason for Moore to go shopping for spare parts this year, or any year in the foreseeable future, with the rotation as a possible caveat.

Just going down the organizational ladder, there are many guys who we might see in KC over the next few years. Lorenzo Cain will be an MLB regular somewhere. Clint Robinson will play for the A’s someday. Yamaico Navarro and Jarrod Dyson are capable bench players now. Kelvin Herrera will be in the bullpen. Mike Montgomery has ace stuff—but he’s also a tall lefty, so it might take a while before he learns to control it. Wil Myers is still a top talent, if he can avoid injuries and regain his confidence. Chris Dwyer will be a quality bullpen lefty at worst, and can still be a mid-rotation guy. Jake Odorizzi has the looks of a two or three starter in the majors. John Lamb won’t start throwing again until late in the summer, but most people I’ve heard are confident that he’ll rebound and be in the majors sometime in 2013. (The guy had a 3.09 ERA in the Texas League, a notorious hitter’s league, as a 20 year-old with an injured shoulder that kept him from throwing his best pitch. If it wasn’t for his undergoing Tommy John surgery, Lamb would have been in the rotation by August this year.) There are a bunch of guys in A-ball to keep an eye on too: Noel Arguelles, Cheslor Cuthbert, Brett Eibner, Jason Adam, Yordano Ventura, Jorge Bonifacio, Michael Antonio, and Robinson Yambati. Bubba Starling is starting instructional league this week in Arizona. Then there’s the next wave of bullpen guys to keep an eye on: Kevin Chapman, Patrick Keating, Henry Barrera, and Kendal Volz. Cuthbert and Bonifacio have the kind of talent that they could find themselves as Top 20 prospects in the next couple years.

There are plenty of question marks—Will Chris Colon ever rebound? Will Rey Navarro ever hit enough to get his glove on the field? Do Myers, Dwyer, and Montgomery reestablish themselves as top prospects?—but a few bad things were bound to happen after everything went right in 2010. I think we’ll see things come back to center in 2012, as far as the farm goes. There’s too much talent there to not have a few guys ready to pop every year.

Theodore Wheeler’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New American Voices, The Kenyon Review, Boulevard, The Cincinnati Review, and Confrontation, among other venues. He is a senior fiction reader at Prairie Schooner, and is currently at work on a novel that is mostly about German-American political thugs, the First World War, and the events surrounding the Omaha Race Riot of 1919.

And don't forget to check out Ted's site and my answers to his questions.

Exhibit 1.4.8

2011-09-30T07:33:00.002-05:00

Textbook

So there's a textbook required for the Composition One class I teach, and while normally I just ignore it if not openly disparage it, there are a few lessons I use from its opening chapters since they're relevant to what the students will do in Comp Two. I don't want my students to be the ones who don't know what ethos is.

(Nobody knows what ethos is.)

Part of this involves a lesson on what the book calls angle of vision which is mostly about how writers control their messages using their perspective, etc. etc. Basic stuff. In the past, the book had a cartoon that made the point that people with different priorities could see the same issue in a variety of ways. This issue was stem cells. Fair enough, that's an issue on which reasonable people can disagree (even if some of them are clearly much, much more reasonable).

So I open this year's textbook expecting to find that same cartoon and instead, there's this:

!!!!

The textbook people, apparently too burned by the controversy over stem cells (in a lesson designed to prepare students to argue effectively no less), decided that this year's issue on which reasonable people could disagree was sweatshops. And somehow they couldn't even come up with a 50/50 split of opinions. 4 out of 6 people in their little scenario are seemingly in favor of sweatshops and only some greasy hippie objects on moral grounds.

Even the explicitly Asian sweatshop worker kid is in favor of sweatshops! Come on, Liang, you couldn't have at least said, "I have mixed feelings on working 14 hour days for pennies."

I really don't know what else to say about it. None of it makes any sense to me. It might be a brilliant but cynical take down of consumer culture and modern capitalism or it might be that someone thinks sweatshops are an issue with sides.

Thank god they didn't ask these people:

Yes, I drew those. Yes, it took more than 10 minutes. No, I will not be drawing again.

Exhibit 1.4.7

2011-09-29T08:07:00.003-05:00

Things

* You definitely need to check out the new The Literary Review which is really beautiful and full of great work and also a couple of [SPOILER ALERT]s. You can actually read those online, but then you'd be missing out on the rest of the fantastic stuff and that would make you, I hate to say it, some kind of idiot. Don't be an idiot.

* There are also some [SPOILER ALERT]s in the new Copper Nickel which--and this isn't just talk--is also beautiful. Seriously. I don't get it. We feel very lucky to have the pieces in two very cool journals. Or at least I do. I don't know how Laura Eve feels. Let's go ask her.

* I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel good about my thoughts on Rick Perry so quickly proving themselves accurate. Or maybe that's not what happened. I don't know. The important thing is that everyone seems to have realized he's an idiot (probably because he didn't read all the way through his literary journals). Bush overcame it. Can Perry? Something tells me he can't. Romney it is (which is actually maybe scary though the John Kerry parallels would be both eery and reassuring).

* "Hey, that final baseball day sure was crazy, wasn't it?" - everyone.

* And yes, yes it was. Look for more Royals thoughts soon in the rare SPM-other blog crossover. And by rare I mean it's never happened and I'm surprised anyone asked.

Exhibit 1.4.6

2011-09-27T10:44:00.005-05:00

Wisconsin

I found this shirt in Madison in anticipation of this week's game against Nebraska, and I have to say, it's sort of awesome. That it's in Nebraska's colors (only because Wisconsin shares them), that there's something so linguistically strange about its chosen insult--its concern with ranking and history and that it attacks the state as a whole and not the football team or the university--well, I sort of want it. I wish it had a question mark at the end as if it, like, meant to start a conversation about Nebraska's place in the country or maybe took more seriously its use of "ever" which confuses everything, but still, it's a really idiosyncratic shirt which could only have sprung from a rivalry which is not and never will be real.

I love it.

I want Nebraska to answer with their own strange insults when these two teams meet again in the Big 10 Championship game:

Exhibit 1.4.5

2011-09-26T10:20:00.003-05:00

This Happened

So I was in an airport bathroom--which always sounds like it will lead to a better story than it does--washing my hands when I hear a man behind me gasp and yell, "There's a woman in there!"

I think, O, that's weird, I didn't remember seeing a woman or anyone else during any part of the urinating process, but, well, I wasn't really looking for one and I hope she wasn't offended or maybe I'm in the wrong bathroom but in any case I should probably look around and apologize as the gasping gentleman seems, based upon his volume, to be quite certain there is a woman here, here in this room where I'm currently standing slapping at the soap dispenser to get it to work and maybe the lady knows hot to get the soap dispenser to work I should ask her yes I will ask the lady.

I turn and scan the room, but there's no one there except me. At this point, I think, That's even weirder as the gentleman who I am now going to have to turn to see momentarily claimed there was a woman in here when, in fact, there was only me and no one else and maybe the lady left and now the soap dispenser is working too much and...O.

When I turn I see two guys had just turned the corner, an older one who is staring at me in horror and a younger one who is trying not to laugh.

"O God, I'm sorry," the older guy says then looks like he wants to explain what, exactly, made him yell that I was a woman--presumably it was the flowing locks and killer blouse--but holds back.

"It's okay," I say, then think, I probably shouldn't tell anyone about this but what if they hear it from the old guy first, so, no, I'll tell everyone about this great.

Exhibit 1.4.4

2011-09-14T11:37:00.003-05:00

Answers

I answered some questions for Midwestern Gothic here. Of course, that link includes a link right back here, so some of you are stuck in an endless Adam Peterson-loop while my cold, dead eyes look on disapprovingly. Or maybe it's not at all like that. I really don't know how you're spending your day.

In any case, it's a great journal and you should pick up a copy here.

Exhibit 1.4.3

2011-09-12T12:43:00.004-05:00

Archival

One of the first stories I ever published is now online as part of the new Madison Review website. And from the same Spring 2008 issue you can also read a poem by Adam Day. Apparently we were journal buddies before we shared an office.

Adam is also an editor at Catch Up, a new journal of literature and comics. Check it out here.

Exhibit 1.4.2

2011-09-08T10:52:00.003-05:00

No More Politics or Football

Only Darkwing Ducks

Exhibit 1.4.1

2011-09-07T21:59:00.004-05:00

Debate Thoughts

Because you didn't ask.

* Perry was Perry. He's strong on the economic stuff where he's got his talking points down, but anyone watching through the end could see his obvious weaknesses on, well, everything else. He's just not good at speaking off the cuff and his best bet in the general is to achieve something like a Kerry-Bush dynamic and cast the president as an out-of-touch blowhard. Man, that's a steep hill as Obama isn’t Kerry and we’ve already had a Bush. So it remains: Perry is really, really bad when he leaves his comfort zone. His comfort zone, by the way, seems to exist between him and the coyote he's currently hunting in his mind.

* He’s got a huge problem with Social Security, by the way. Rather than back down from the ideas in his stupid, stupid book, he doubled down. Someone needs to work up the spine to tell the governor that the only problem people have with Social Security is that it might not be there. “Fixing” it is one thing, saying it shouldn’t exist is another. And by another I mean insanely unpopular.

* Most telling moment of the night was one that most probably didn't stick around for but will surely get a lot of play on the left: the crowd’s kneejerk cheering Perry's execution total. I wouldn't overreact to this--we could probably come up with some pretty terrible applause lines that would fly at a Democratic primary debate--but that there will be no rightwing repudiation of this is one of the things that has to have mainstream Republicans worried. I mean, where can you go from there? Unless the Republicans are willing to go full on The Running Man, you’ve got to think they’d rather this not be a party plank.

* And that’s really the underplayed narrative of their field (if it’s possible to have such a thing in this political climate). They aren’t just for killing 234 murderers—another terrible, out-of-date but not entirely unjustifiable position—they applaud it. Without prompting. In the middle of a sentence. Spoken by a journalist. We should recognize what they were really applauding was their support given what they suspected was going to be (something they would perceive as) a “gotcha” question. But that’s what makes this so problematic and the party’s prospects so dim as long as they pursue this path. Suspicion of the media. Suspicion of what are quickly becoming mainstream values. And, this is the problem, suspicion of anyone who would deviate from those values. Honestly, if they’d followed up that question by asking all the candidates, “Do any of you have a problem with governor Perry’s execution record?” would any have been brave enough to raise their hands? Of course not. But that’s not the bad part. The bad part would be if someone asked why the other governors hadn’t executed more.

Because here’s the thing: once you’re so paranoid that you can’t accept any deviation from a set of beliefs without it being a threat, you start to form a cult around those things you believe. Some tax cuts are good? Then all tax cuts are good. Government spending is bad? Then government shouldn’t spend on anything. Executions are good? Government should execute as many as possible.

And this, actually, isn’t that unusual of a position for the extremes of either party (though I think it’s a little more typical of rightwing thought whereas the left usually has some level of perceived [if not entirely real] nuance), it’s that this thought has somehow become the norm of the party in the last two cycles. It’s actually hard to overstate how impossible seeming this would be for modern Democrats. Imagine if Bernie Sanders suddenly got to dictate the terms of the debate the way Jim DeMint does? We' be thrilled right up until we started losing every election. Then we'd be less thrilled, I imagine.

Anyway, it’s fascinating here because of what it will mean for the general election. Conventional wisdom says these ideas can’t possibly win a national election, electoral college or no, economy or no. Conventional wisdom says these are fringe candidate ideas. And yet here we are cheering them before they can even be spoken.

* I’m writing this while playing online chess in a coffee shop. It’s amazing nobody has looked at my computer and punched me in the face.

* So, quick summary: any Republicans concerned with actually winning an election have to be moving to the Romney camp about now. He looked good and, to be honest, I was a little afraid of how he might match up with Obama given the president's considerable struggles. Which is not to say Republicans wouldn’t happily settle for Perry, just that those electability questions loom nearly as big for him as they once did for Bachmann.

Exhibit 1.3.27

2011-09-06T20:36:00.004-05:00

Fantasy Football Draft Recap (Redux)

I'm hating myself more and more with every word I type. I'll probably only be able to manage some 700 or 800 of them. Forgive me. For everything.

The Cal Drogo

O, god and I made a logo. I almost forgot about that. But I didn't. Instead I told everyone about it and posted it every time I got the opportunity. Otherwise, however, I totally forgot.

Round 1 - Chris Johnson, RB
I sort of wonder where he would have gone if I hadn't grabbed him at 6. I feel like people forgot that the reason he was downgraded was because he was holding out but that, now that he signed, there's really nothing wrong with him. Or maybe I'm forgetting something, like how he hasn't played at all this preseason and Tennessee is horrible and I should have just rolled the dice with Vick. Except there's this: we've spent the last two periods in my composition classroom discussing a couple of articles on Vick and, frankly, I hate him. I remember that.

I actually feel really good about Johnson here. Their QB situation is more stable (if not more fragile), and outside of injury, Johnson seems like as safe a bet to put up 1500+ yards as there is.

Round 2 - Larry Fitzgerald, WR
Let's all forget about who I grabbed in the second round of my last draft and try to focus on the fact that in this one, I got a guy who put up numbers even with Derek Anderson and Max Hall throwing him the ball. Fitzgerald is like Antonio Gates. You just like having him.

Really though, there wasn't much temptation to go in any other direction. Vick almost dropped all the way here which was a shock in a 12-team league and I would have picked him if he were insulting a puppy's mother in front of it while eating all of its rawhide cigars. I would have, really.

Round 3 - Matt Forte, RB
I've actually always had a weird soft spot for Forte, mostly because I don't really understand who he is or where he comes from or why he's good or what he likes to do on weekends. O, except put up yards. He's not a TD guy--not yet--but damn if he isn't productive. Bet you didn't know he's averaged 1500 yards rushing/receiving per year. I'll take it. The Bears' offensive line is horrible, but I don't really care. They were last year too. Felt really good about this pick. I like guys who nobody thinks about until they put up 20 points and confuse everyone.

Round 4 - Dez Bryant, WR
What we've learned here is that I will take Dez Bryant if given the opportunity. I think I actually wanted Brandon Marshall here, but my brother jumped on him. Or maybe I wanted him with the next pick. I can't remember.

The theme of this draft is memory: I only have it when it comes to dogs and not football or Matt Forte's hobbies.

Round 5 - Ben Roethlisberger, QB
Why do I always wait too long to take a QB and end up with this clown?

That's what I wrote two years ago when I waited too long and took that clown. This year, I feel a good about him, actually (that offense is explosive), but I still hate him as evidenced by my having never said one nice thing about him on this blog.

Round 6 - Jimmy Graham, TE
Tight ends were going fast and I (like everyone else) really love Jimmy Graham this year. I reached a little, but the other options weren't anything special. I loved him coming out of Miami, actually, and remained more than a little bummed the Dolphins couldn't find a way to get him.

I want one of two things out of my tightend position: consistency so I never have to think about it or extreme upside so it becomes exciting to check the box score. Thanks, Jimmy.

Round 7 - Joseph Addai, RB
This league plays with two flex spots and a short bench so Addai will almost certainly start for me until he gets hurt or Peyton Manning dies and the Colts fall apart. So the upside is...well, I'm not sure actually. He's a weird player. He's never been that good--and he's been bad the last three years--and yet he's still the starter and it's not inconceivable that if healthy he could be a really strong number three. I'm not counting on him or anything, but it would be nice if he proved to have one more average season in him.

Round 8 - Fred Jackson, RB
This is the perplexing thing about fantasy football generally (and this league specifically). Having Fred Jackson as your fourth running back and second flex really isn't terrible. In fact, I can imagine scenarios where people would be excited to have him as their third if the fourth were a boom or bust wide receiver. Jackson is a starter, always produces, catches passes, will get goal line carries, etc. And yet nobody wants him. Hell, I don't even want him. No team starting him can be that good.

It's strange, but I think I'd rather have him as my third best running back than my fourth. That would at least imply I had strength elsewhere. As is, he's just sort of there not being very good or very bad. I don't like it. You can't trust mediocrity. I want to cut him already which doesn't even make any sense.

Round 9 - Pierre Garcon, WR
Why not? O right, because I hated him last year.

Round 10 - Davone Bess, WR
I love Davone Bess. I hope he challenges Fred Jackson to a fight and only one comes back.

Fantasy football doesn't work that way, but I wish it did. The Cal Drogo play Fantasy Fantasy Football, and that's the way I like it.

Anyway, I weirdly might start Bess more than any of the three people picked in front of him because I like Dolphins and Bess is reliable. That's probably not smart, but smart isn't what got Ed Stark to where he is today.

Draft Grade: B. I thought about B-minus, but the more I look at this team the more I like it and might even go B-plus. Those first three picks are perfect, I feel like, and if Dez steps up (which, apparently, I really think is going to happen) and Pitt's offense is what it should be then I've got a really strong lineup of marque players. Down roster it's more 'take a walk' than it is 'hit or miss,' but that might not be a bad thing. Might not be a good thing either. Who knows. I honestly have forgotten who my tight end is. Is it Antonio Gates? God, I hope so.

Exhibit 1.3.26

2011-09-02T09:28:00.005-05:00

Things, Promotional and Otherwise

* A friend of mine decided to move the party to Doha and is writing a phenomenal--and phenomenally titled--blog called It's Pronounced Qatar. Or maybe that's only phenomenal if you actually know how to pronounce Qatar which, it turns out, I didn't (it rhymes with "butter"). I'm considering his experience there practice for the upcoming World Cup. Also, pronouncing butter.

* Brief thoughts on the Obama speech kerfuffle: O Jesus Christ, really?

* The Cupboard needs you to like it. Harder. Please help us by liking our page here and telling your friends to do so, too. We're terrible about this stuff.

* Brief Dolphins thoughts: Vegas has them at 7.5 wins. I'd probably still bet the under (or at least that's the smart bet), but for some reason (likely the Orton debacle) people who don't know the team keep saying they'll be lucky to win 4. This makes no sense to me. I think Vegas is begging you to take the under not realizing the Dolphins are going to finish with a top-3 defense.

* NewPages wrote a really nice review of the new Camera Obscura which says such embarrassingly nice things about my story that I sort of want to punch them. I too love this journal, and everyone should. Subscribe, submit, spread the word.

* O, and there's this Mark Sanchez is not (yet) better than Chad Henne. Anyone who has the Jets winning the Super Bowl should probably be aware of that. Sorry. That was more Dolphins thoughts. I should have warned you.

* In more journal pimping news, a friend of mine started a new online journal called Owl Eye Review which is up and accepting submissions and watching you. The first issue is great, and I expect even greater things in the future. I mean, if we can trust owls which, I don't know, it might be time to.

* What I'm saying is, the Jets got worse this offseason, the Dolphins got slightly better. Don't get me wrong, the Jets are still a better team in all likelihood, by why are some people acting like 11 wins are a sure thing for the Jets while the Dolphins won't get 5? The following things are true: the Dolphins defense is better, Mark Sanchez and Chad Henne are a wash, and we're coming up on the time when Rex Ryan starts to get tuned out. Just saying. O, and that was about politics.

* Laura Eve and I have a [SPOILER ALERT] in the new DIAGRAM. This issue just launched so I haven't had much time to read through it, but I see names I know and trust. Plus, it's DIAGRAM. What could go wrong?

* Update: Since I first posted this, I read Bill Barnwell's NFL preview on Grantland.com which includes the smartest take on the Dolphins I've read yet in the national media. He nails the team's potential downfall while still realizing there's a lot of talent on the team.

Exhibit 1.3.25

2011-08-31T20:14:00.003-05:00

I Live Here Now

If you need to get in touch with and/or commit a crime against me, this is the place.

Exhibit 1.3.24

2011-08-31T09:39:00.006-05:00

Fantasy Football Draft Recap

Politics! Fantasy football! I'm that guy you hate! Anyway, this happening. Worse, there's going to be another next week for the Game of Thrones-inspired The Cal Drogo.

(Note: I said that solely because I keep getting search hits from people looking for "Game of Thrones Fantasy Football Team Name." I'm currently #4 behind things that aren't even about fantasy football. I want to be #1. So I'm going to keep saying Game of Thrones and fantasy football until it happens. You've been warned).

This week's team, however, is:

Mike Kafkaesque

Look, it's a league with other writers, what do you want from me? Although, yes, it's true, I probably didn't need to spend all that time photoshopping a bowler onto the 3rd string quarterback from Philadelphia's head.

Round 1 - Arian Foster, RB
It's not so much that I love Foster as I love his odd first name. What did the nurses think when his mom said it for the first time? How many times until he became famous was it spelled "Aryan"? How uncomfortable would it make everyone if I renamed my team "The Arian Brotherhood." Still, as the guy with the 2nd pick in the draft, I feel good about Foster. I could have had Peterson, too, and while I would love a guy with my own last name, I just hate his offensive line, his fumbles, and the fact that nothing about "Adrian" name makes me laugh. Well, okay, that's not true.

(Update: Within hours after I wrote this it came out that Foster's hamstring "tweak" might actually be a tear that could cause him to miss a few weeks. Damnit).

Round 2 - Shonn Greene, RB
Shut up. Just shut up. He ruined my team last year, his team might throw more this year, his name is equally misspelled but not nearly as funny, and he plays for a team I hate. Otherwise, this was a great pick. Seriously though, I panicked. Was a tough spot since the guy I wanted (Larry Fitzgerald) was picked one spot ahead an it was a weird nether region of 3rd tier running backs and 2nd tier wide receivers. Despite all this, I actually do think Greene can have a good--even great--season. LT is fading into the background, the Jets are still going to run a lot because Mark Sanchez sucks, and Greene showed he was ready at the end of last season.

I still hate this pick.

Round 3 - Tom Brady, RB
I wanted to make sure I had two guys on my team that I really hated. Still, I actually feel really good about this pick as he was the last marquee QB. And by marquee QB, I literally mean he would rather be on a marquee than play football. When he quits midway through the season to take over the role of Jaime Lannister on Game of Thrones, my fantasy football team is going to be totally Game of Thrones fantasy football GoT fantasy football team names winter is coming.

Round 4 - Dez Bryant, WR
You know how you haven't heard anything about Dez Bryant this offseason? No fighting teammates, no oddly large jewelry debts, no getting kicked out of bars? Yeah, I like that. I believe. Still, as my #1 receiver in a 10-team league, I think we can safely say my receivers are the weak point which is why...

Round 5 - Antonio Gates, TE
I had Antonio Gates on my team once and it was like having Wesley Clark in your war. Things got done, nobody got hurt, we all thought--hey, that went really well, shouldn't it always go that well? It better. I love Antonio Gates.

Round 6 - Marques Colston, WR
Just a solid performer who I think is in for a good season. I really wanted Brandon Marshall here, but unfortunately he went like 26 picks before. I wasn't really paying attention. Colston is probably in the "other guys on this team need the ball now" stage of his career, but he's still a good bet for yards, touchdowns, and consistency.

Round 7 - Matt Schaub, QB
I actually don't remember if I took him or the next pick here, but I did like grabbing Schaub. I have no idea why nobody else grabbed him (Eli Manning, Ben Roethlisberger [who when I misspelled his name autocorrect suggested I switch to 'Brotherhood' which is both sort of right and completely wrong], and Josh Freeman are other starting QBs in this league). I'm pretty sure I can trade Schaub at some point or, at worst, he's a strong backup.

Round 8 - Beanie Wells, RB
They have no one else to run the ball, and they have to run, right? Right? Please? I always pick guys like this and they always end up sucking. O well. Both him and Greene could be awesome or terrible. There really doesn't seem to be an inbetween.

Rounds 9 - the end in some order:

Kenny Britt, WR - He's had the opposite of Dez Bryant's offseason and yet for some reason I love the idea of Hassleback throwing him the ball. He's good.

Steve Smith, WR (Panthers) - As long as the playoffs are played using stats from 2005, he should be a good pick.

Jonathan Stewart, RB - I don't know. I remember wanting someone who wasn't him, but, well, here we are with two players from the worst team in football back-to-back. Best case scenario is DeAngelo Williams gets injured. Which seems likely. O, and Stewart himself is not injured. This seems less likely.

Michael Crabtree, WR - You'll notice none of my backups come from teams with good QBs. That might be an issue. O well. I love Crabtree and think if he's healthy he could have a good year no matter who is throwing him the ball. Except he's not healthy and no one is going to be throwing the ball.

Ben Tate, RB - Arian insurance. Which, incidentally, is something you can buy in Mississippi.

Alex Henery, K - What can I say, a homer pick. Nebraska!

Miami Dolphins, D - Same. I'm probably going to just go ahead and drop them week one when they play New England. Still, I think Miami's defense is going to be pretty damn impressive this season. I mean, they were last season and have only gotten better. Still, I don't want to mess with Tom Brady star of the hit HBO fantasy drama Game of Thrones. Not when my good fantasy football team name is on the line.

Draft grade: B. I feel like I've got limited upside, especially with some of my backups, but that overall this team is likely to be a consistently strong performer. Need to get another WR and hope that one of Wells and Greene shows up, but if those things happen, it's a good team.

Exhibit 1.3.23

2011-08-29T13:43:00.003-05:00

Rick Perry

Politics. Why not.

So, as a current Texan--god, I hate that--I've got some thoughts on Rick Perry. They're not particularly revolutionary, but I sense a lot of my non-Texan, liberal friends are suddenly scared of Mr. Perry which, frankly, they probably should be. He's terrifying.

At first. And that's sort of the genius of him, really. He cuts a swaggering and invulnerable figure in Texas and as a national candidate, he really seems uniquely suited to take on the president--religious, Tea Party-approved, perceived to be anomalously successful economically over the last few years, and, perhaps most importantly, folksy and headstrong in a way that contrasts wildly with the president. So why did major Republicans make a renewed push to lure a Chris Christie or a Paul Ryan into the race immediately after Perry entered? O, right, there's the little matter of him being exactly like George W. Bush only, somehow, worse.

That might seem unfair. Perry is, after all, his own man, yet one can't listen to him speak without immediately thinking of our 43rd president. It's almost bizarre how identical Perry-the-candidate is to Bush-the-candidate. All the policies are the same—and, again, sometimes worse—only this time Perry doesn't have to bother with wrapping himself in some moderating blanket like "Compassionate conservative." That's good because he probably wouldn't be able to pull it off half as well and bad because, well, Perry's still got to convince the rest of the non-Tea Party world to vote for him.

And this is where anyone concerned with Rick Perry should calm down. George W. Bush remains wildly unpopular and, as much as anything else, this should put a damper on his general election hopes. You might think it's superficial, but it's a real issue for Republicans and they know it. All the conservatives who now claim never to have liked the second Bush are obviously ready to move on in the cause of anyone-but-Obama, but for the rest of us, a serious Perry campaign would mean asking hard questions about the last administration and whether or not we're willing to risk a return to it. And then there's this: George W. could come off as a common man, Rick Perry--far more common in background and education--comes off as an arrogant bully and a substantially less intelligent one than our former president.

Watch:

This is not to say a Perry campaign is hopeless (anything but). The president has done more than enough to make himself vulnerable, and his best hope seems to be to convince the country that the Republicans had it out for him and were willing to sacrifice the country to take down his presidency (pretty much true). Will he be able to do it? Probably. Or maybe I just don't think this country is yet willing to risk another dick swinging Texas Republican. O, sure, we might say we want it now, but once the general election rolls around, it's hard to see how hardline positions about never raising taxes and social security being a Ponzi scheme are going to get one to 50% of the vote.

In this sense, Romney is still the Republicans' best choice (though I'm starting to think his nomination over Perry might risk a Tea Party-backed 3rd party candidacy from someone like Bachman), but it seems increasingly unlikely that he'll be the nominee when no Republican seems to actually want to vote for him. Establishment Republicans seem all too aware that Perry is going to be the candidate non-insiders rally around--and that's why he's different from late entries of bygone days like Fred Thompson and Wesley Clark--and they want another option. It's not that Perry doesn't have the best chance of winning out of the current field, it's that they're afraid the current field might top out at 46% of the electorate.

Looking at polls, a couple of things seem clear. No one likes Republicans and no one likes the economy. Weirdly, people still like Obama, at least personally (although they may be beginning to separate his performance from his personality), and it seems like the only candidate who could beat him would somehow have to make the case he or she can fix the economy and not be an ideologue. This, obviously, is where Perry fails, at least at the moment. Smart Republicans know that his gender is not going to make him immune from the Sarah Palin treatment and dumb ones think he can win with the Tea Party alone.

And who knows, maybe he can. Obama has to find a better reason to bring out his voters again than 'I'm not an idiot and the other guys might be.' But Perry might actually tip the scales too far. God knows there are plenty of liberals who are going to hear him talk and think of G.W. At the point, it becomes anyone but him, and then you might see a left as invigorated as the right.

This is why Ryan and Christie are such attractive candidates to Beltway Republicans. They have all Perry's positives (perceived economic credentials, Tea Party-approved, vaguely presidential) and none of his negatives (neither seems like a Multiplicity-esque 5th generation George W. Bush clone). Ryan is obviously the lesser of the two but even still, he'd give mainstream Republicans cover to avoid a Bachman or Perry candidacy. Tim Pawlenty badly miscalculated when he decided to veer hard right (or maybe he just didn't see Bachman coming from his own backyard) and Huntsman, God bless him, seems close to agreeing with everyone else that he should really be a Democrat (points to him, however, for being the only non-major contender to realize that courting the Tea Party is a fool's errand with Bachman [and now Perry] around). So it's only Perry that seems like a legit option, and a legit option he is.

In an open election, he might even justify some of the fear he's been producing, but, then again, in an open election, he'd definitely have to beat Chris Christie and a slew of other more mainstream challengers. Without those more electable options, he's running for the title of "least obviously retrograde" which, in this climate, might have a shot. After all, 30% of the people would probably rather die than vote for Obama which might mean a lot except that 40% will probably feel the same way about Perry once they get to know him.

Of course, Perry--like Bush before him--might find a way to moderate himself in time for the general election, but it’s important to note that Bush never had to swing nearly this hard to the right. More than that, of course, is that Perry doesn’t want to moderate himself (you’ve got to think his advisors hate the fact that Perry published a book full of radically hard right positions [flat tax!] back when he didn’t think he’d be a candidate and now has to carry those ideas into this election).

So maybe Obama does end up facing something like a Perry-Huntsman ticket (which, though I highly doubt it would happen, would be the smartest pick Perry could make. He’ll probably find some elder Republican with economic and foreign policy credentials). Is that the worst case scenario? Not really. Even a moderate VP pick isn’t going to soften Perry up enough for the general populace, and his economic ideas are a tough sell, no matter what he claims to have done in Texas. And this remains the most important point: even with this economy, George W. Bush wouldn’t be able to beat Obama in ’12. Why would a dumber, more radical imitation?

Exhibit 1.3.22

2011-08-24T17:49:00.007-05:00

You Know, For Kids

I love everything about this Craigslist post.

What terrible things is a child reared in that bed going to do? Or maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. That child is going to be really good at a lot of things. Like headlocks. Headlocks are important.

My favorite part are the keywords hidden in the ad which I've arranged below in order of relevance from "Well, I Guess" to "What the Hell?"

custom (so you said)
mma (it's not an octagon, but it'll do)
new (so no blood stains...yet)
baby (and he always will be if he can't take a punch better than that)
solid (does seem to be made of durable fencing materials)
real (unfortunately it appears so)
coarse (I think you mean crude)
sofas/couch (I do need one...)
four/six (years until the first murder)
silver (seems black as the devil's eyes)
kid a (like, the Radiohead album?)
french (let's not tell them about this)

Exhibit 1.3.21

2011-08-09T11:15:00.005-05:00

New Cupboard

“I sleep where everyone can see me.”

The Buff

By Anne Marie Rooney
Now Available

1 tape-bound volume
Book Design by William Todd Seabrook
Cover Design by Betsy Seymour

$15/year subscription, $5/individual

*ABOUT THE VOLUME*
Silicone trenches. Gold amphitheaters. Whole red rivers. The clouds, the clouds, the clouds. Through the gutpunch sentences of these twenty-eight pieces you'll get taken to stark, secret places. It's not so much the beauty you'll find there as it is the horror, the cold sweat. This is The Buff. This is surrealism's new texture. "It was a strange world," this narrator insists, "and I was in it."

Read more excerpts here.

*ABOUT THE AUTHOR*
Anne Marie Rooney's first book, Spitshine, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press. She is the recipient of the Iowa Review Award, the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, and the Amy Award, and her writing has appeared in the Best New Poets and Best American Poetry anthologies. Born and raised in New York City, she recently earned her M.F.A. from Cornell University, and currently lives in New Orleans with her partner. Anne Marie hopes to live in a lighthouse when she grows up.

*SUBSCRIBE*
The Cupboard mails 4 volumes per year at a cost of $15. Subscribe here.

Individual volumes, including past volumes from Caia Hagel, Amanda Goldblatt, Andrew Borgstrom, and Ryan Call and James Scott are available for $5.

*SUBMIT*
The Cupboard will be accepting submissions through September 1st. You're invited to submit prose work between 4,000 and 8,000 words through our Submishmash site here.

*CONTEST RESULTS*
The Cupboard is pleased to announce the results of its first-ever contest.

Winner
David Hawkins, Lorraine Nelson: A Biography in Post-It Notes

Runner-Up
JoAnna Novak, Drape Your Wrist with an Expensive Wristwatch

Finalists
Josh Cook, The Mysterious City
Sherrie Flick, Good Dog
Jamie Gaughran-Perez, California Ruins the End
Pedro Ponce, The Paranormal Guide to Wedding Etiquette
John Stadler, dear comrade

We would like to thank everyone who entered and again congratulate our finalists.

*OUR NEXT VOLUME*
Our contest winner, Lorraine Nelson: A Biography in Post-It Notes by David Hawkins, will be the next volume of The Cupboard. Look for it this fall.

Exhibit 1.3.20

2011-08-05T11:55:00.003-05:00

Fantasy Football

The Cal Drogo

This year's team name which is meaningless unless you've seen Game of Thrones. And even then...

Exhibit 1.3.19

2011-08-02T09:41:00.001-05:00

The Authentic Animal

Dave Madden's The Authentic Animal is available today, and you should pick it up even if he did refuse to name the chapter about pet taxidermy "Stay" (or did I want "Play Dead"? I can't even remember). In any case, it's one of many delightful ruminations on animals, death, and our relationship with both to be found underneath that beautiful cover. I've been lucky enough to watch this manuscript grow up and the time, effort, and viscera-witnessing that went into it makes it well worth the wait. You want this book. Buy it today and make Dave's book the number one rated Zoology book on Amazon. Together, we can do this.

(The current number one is a book about animals being friends with each other. Come on, America.)

It's not, of course, a Zoology book, not really. The chapters here are smart and often personal explorations of why we choose to preserve dead animals (but not--or at least not typically--dead humans) and how, beyond that, we've turned it into an art. The best thing about the book is how it isn't for the taxidermy enthusiast or even taxidermy-inclined but for the curious, the sort of reader who wants to understand. Dave's book seems to begin there, with a question over who we are and why we do what we do, and over the next 90,000 words moves toward explaining what compels us. It's not a book stupid enough to turn taxidermy into a metaphor for everything, but it is a book smart enough to acknowledge that even the tiniest subcultures, even taxidermists, are simply one more attempt to know and control our world.

And, on a more personal note, Dave's been my writing best friend, Cupboard co-editor, and title decliner for almost as long as he's been working on this book. He's a brilliant writer, and I'm thrilled to see this book get the publication and attention it deserves. I would consider you helping him out by purchasing it, reading it, loving it, and spreading the word a favor.

Do it.

Exhibit 1.3.18

2011-07-26T08:01:00.001-05:00

Camera Obscura

I knew since their first issue that Camera Obscura would be one of my favorite literary journals. It's stylish without neurosis, smart without smugness, relevant without pandering. It's weird how easy a journal like this can make the format and how, well, obsolete it can make other journals.

It's not the photography that makes CO seem bigger--though it certainly doesn't hurt--but the boldness of the fiction which, much like the design, always seems to be doing several things at once without falling into any of the usual traps. Like the photographs, it's always worldly and adroit and, damnit, just hard to look away from. Take the opening to Vincent Czyz's "The Nameless Saint":

It was the hour when the lamplighter, toting a ladder over his shoulder, made his tedious rounds; when workers slogged through the streets as though souls on their way to purgatory; when bones turning to dust in graveyards unexpectedly shifted like a heap of logs burning on the grate. This was not the quarter of Samirska lit by theaters and cafes, cabarets and fine restaurants--a quarter smiling like a crescent moon in the dusk--here the restaurants had bare wooden floors and for a drima offered a bowl of cabbage soup or, for a few more, greasy stew and a slice of black village bread. here, mounted gendarmes patrolled the streets in pairs or not at all.

You want to read the rest of that story and the rest of that issue.

Of course, I have a story here which you probably don't want to read and is mostly notable for having taken its title from the repeated line in an Arthur & Yu song ("1000 Words") that Dave turned me onto a long time back. It seems appropriate to me that the story ended up in a journal with a photography emphasis, and I'm thrilled it's there.

Please help them out by subscribing here or by checking your local Barnes & Noble. Unless you're in Topeka in which case I think my parents already bought them all. See, that's how much I care. I told my parents, and they don't even know where I live.*

*That's probably not true.

Exhibit 1.3.17

2011-07-22T18:53:00.003-05:00

Royals Thoughts

Eric Hosmer, Kyle Davies, Tim Collins, Chris Getz

What each Royal is presumably thinking during this picture. Royals hat-tip to Anders for sending me both links.

Hosmer: Hey, Stephen Malkmus knows who I am! Just like I know that "Jenny and the Ess-Dog" is the best song he's ever written. Well, there's "Tide to the Oceans" but that's a Silver Jews song and really it's only co-written.

Davies: I can't believe they haven't caught on to the fact that I haven't been on this team for two months. Just keep wearing blue and showing up every five days and nobody asks questions. It's unbelievable. Kinko's figured it out after a month, and I was even good at that job. Maybe if I throw left-handed next start...

Collins: Wait until I tell the Make-A-Wish Foundation how well this worked out. Sure, I might be Benjamin Button-ing back into a baby, but at least I look cool with my glasses hung like this...O, go to hell, Getz.

Getz: If I get released am I going to disappear from this picture like Marty McFly? I should ask Davies if that keeps him up at night, too. I wonder if he's Jewish. I'd like a Jewish friend. His real first name is Hiram and Hiram Davies sounds Jewish, but he's also from Georgia...wait, is Hosmer humming "Cut Your Hair"?

Exhibit 1.3.16

2011-07-19T16:13:00.005-05:00

Things That Confuse Me about the Paperboy Universe

(This is about the Nintendo video game Paperboy not, like, the real paperboy universe which features fewer tornadoes yet considerably more angry dogs. You can play the game here if you're not familiar).

* The audience for the obstacle course. Note: not the obstacle course itself which, somehow, I can fit into my conception of the world. No, it's the people who rise at 5:30 a.m. to sit in bleachers and cheer the rare paperboy who completes his route that make me question the verisimilitude of this game. Too far, I say.

* The newspaper's coverage of its own paperboy hirings and firings. I mean, I can see something in the Community section, but front page? Day after day? When there's breakdancing in the streets and Death roams the city?

* The house painting. I mean, I get deciding to unsubscribe from the local paper is a big decision, but it's not the War of the Roses, here. A good paperboy can avoid throwing papers to yellow houses just as easily as red ones. It's, like, days two through three of the training.

* Housewives chasing paperboys with rollingpins. What is it about the paperboy that turns everyone into this city into Mrs. Capp? And these are subscribers, too. The unsubscribers don't really seem to give a damn, even as you're breaking their windows. Of course, they might get cut down like a bunch of dirty Lancasters, so they probably just don't leave their houses at all.

* The tombstones in the front yards. It just sends a bad message to the breakdancers.

Exhibit 1.3.15

2011-07-15T12:00:00.003-05:00

What's Currently Killing Me

1. Being out of coffee.

2. It being too hot to get coffee.

3. Wurlitzers.

4. Replying to emails, phone calls, letters, owls, waves, punches.

5. The term "debt ceiling."

6. Tuesdays. Just as, like, a thing we can't do anything about.

7. Socks. Just as, like, a thing we can't do anything about.

8. The murderer.

9. Taco truck ennui.

10. Not these sweatpants.

Exhibit 1.3.14

2011-07-13T08:25:00.001-05:00

Summer Drink

Okay, so this exists and I want one:

The Leland Palmer
Let me check my kitchen to see what I can throw together: (ingredients I have in bold)

1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup hot water
3 cups freshly brewed jasmine tea, cooled
3/4 cup gin
3/4 cup limoncello*
3/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup fresh grapefruit juice
1 cup chilled club soda
Ice cubes
6 lemon slices (for garnish)

So, water. I have the water-based ingredients. Previously I might have been impressed by my ability to provide these ingredients at a variety of temperatures, but now I need to step up my game. You know why? Here's why:

Exhibit 1.3.13

2011-07-11T12:19:00.005-05:00

Things I Would Rather Be Doing Than Re-Reading My Novel

1. Finally deciding, for once and for all, whether my favorite type of soil is loamy sand or sandy loam.

2. Planning an Amanda Knox-themed murder mystery dinner party. Pizza! Tragedy! Pizza!

3. Arguing over what stats would be included if one were to--hypothetically--start a Fantasy Poetry league.

4. Writing this blog post, apparently.

5. Creating an even better version of the Four Pawns Attack--my favorite chess opening--called the Eight Pawns Attack which, presumably, I would like twice as much.

6. Emailing Bud Selig ideas for new All-Star game events like the Cake Walk, a game Jeff Francoeur can't participate in because he doesn't understand the basic concept of walking.

7. Plotting an elaborate scavenger hunt around Houston the only task of which is to eat at every Shipley's Do-nuts.

8. Playing two estranged siblings against each other until they realize it's me they don't like and come together to save Thanksgiving. Or, instead of actually doing that, just writing a family comedy about it while thousands of real siblings remain tragically estranged.

9. Inventing "Roller Basketball" because it suddenly seems like something that should exist.

10. Preparing my victory speech should I somehow win the Iowa Caucuses which, frankly, doesn't seem as unlikely as it probably should.

Exhibit 1.3.12

2011-07-08T10:03:00.004-05:00

Things

* Look, I was in Vermont for a month and made the very mature decision not to blog while there in order to concentrate on my Game of Thrones watching. And watched it was though somehow I still managed to post an Air Supply video and a picture of me getting--what the kids call--served. Priorities.

* I'm back now with nothing else to do this summer except learn French so expect more posts about garcons mangeing on pommes or whatever. That was three-quarters French so I'm almost there.

* You should check out my friend Angie's new blog Childhood Relived. Angie's hilarious and a mom and a hilarious mom. So glad I now have a venue for her pop culture musings that doesn't involve me flying to Nebraska and scheduling a dinner party.

* I think I'm going to start writing about books again. Just because, you know, why not. French books? O yeah. I lit the livres. Right now, I'm reading Terrence Holt's In the Valley of the Kings.

* So I've had some more Sire onLines out there though what you should really be interested in is the far more awesome work in these journals:

* I love Super Arrow. This is exactly what an online journal should be: everything a print journal can't be. Especially a fan of the collaborations between Steven Karl and Angela Veronica Wong.

* The new jmww has some writers I love who I didn't know I loved and plenty I already knew I loved, including Cupboard-er Andrew Borgstrom. Be sure to check out Gabe Blackwell's equation-based story.

* kill author is amazing. That's all, really. Really proud to be in there (as I am with all the others), and I especially dig Katie Jean Shinkle's "When All You Want Doesn't Want You."

Exhibit 1.3.11

2011-06-20T15:19:00.006-05:00

Thesis Defense

It suddenly occurs to me I stopped updating you on the exploits of Thesis Defense, our Creative Writing Program intramural basketball team. If only there was some way I could sum up our loss in the playoffs in one humiliating photo. O, there is? Great:

In my defense, we were in a zone so, really, it could have been any of the opposing players scoring on me. Not in my defense: my defense. Hands up, Peterson.

Photo thanks(?) to Karyna McGlynn whose book you should pick up here. Pick up and destroy probably.

Exhibit 1.3.10

2011-06-20T10:56:00.004-05:00

Videos about Being on Tour Released in 1983: A Compendium

* Journey's "Faithfully"

* Air Supply's "Making Love Out of Nothing at All"
(also notable for having invented the video picture frame which is what you will be getting your parents for Christmas in 2014)

The end.

Exhibit 1.3.9

2011-06-14T19:41:00.004-05:00

Need to Figure This Out

So I keep going back and forth on this point, and I can't decide: Did the dinosaur hunter guy from Jurassic Park use his final breath to make a Total Recall reference before being mauled by velociraptors?

Evidence for:

1) Said to a "girl"

2) This girl had been "clever"

Evidence against:

1) He's about to die making it an odd thing to choose as one's final words regardless of the quote's appropriateness in the situation (sort of like if you were stabbed and said, "If it bleeds, we can kill it." before, you know, dying).

2) No other evidence he's a Total Recall fan

Okay, that's pretty much it.

Exhibit 1.3.8

2011-06-07T20:17:00.013-05:00

An Unnecessarily Obscene Letter to the Game of Thrones Universe

Look, dickholes, I've been loving your show. And I don't mean to call you dickholes, but I've been thinking it over and you're something like dickholes. It's not you. It's your civilization. Every so often a character on the show throws something out like, "We've been guarding this giant wall for 8,000 years," and, you know, I get that they're proud of their family's commitment to standing in the snow but I'm like wait, wait, wait--these dickholes have been here for 8,000 years and haven't invented Applebees?

I'm joking. Sort of. Just because we invented Applebees after less than 8,000 years doesn't mean everyone should have, but is a Hardees too much to ask for? I'm joking again. That's me joking. You guys might not even care for reasonably priced 3-course meals that serve families on a budget. I don't know that but I know this. Your civilization has been around for more than 8,000 years and you've accomplished these things:

1) Giant wall
2) Training crows to carry letters

That's it as far as I can tell. And it doesn't make sense because I see wheels and pulleys and you must be this close to the inclined plane so it's like, come on you shitbirds, learn how to build machines already. I'm not asking for Terminators or anything, just, you know, something more complicated than what my Tamagotchi comes up with if it lives more than a week before starving. For example: It takes your king a month to go on a ski vacation which means every trip anywhere is basically the Oregon Trail. How many jerkoffs have to die of cholera before you guys get trains?

You know how many Applebees I could visit in a month? Enough to enjoy a whole asston of their new sizzling Cajun shrimp.

So let's think this over. I mean, you've got the crows. That's pretty cool. Our crows just act like stuckup goth kids. Of course, if they get sick, we can save them with crow penicillin and make them see better using lasers. In fact, our crows might live to be 8,000 and they don't have to stand on a wall unless they want to. Come to think of it, maybe you should make one of our crows king and save yourselves a lot of action and sex-packed intrigue.

But look, that's really not the point here. The point is this: some of our people don't think our entire planet is much more than 8,000 years old. And that means you guys are falling behind in all areas except incest technology. But it's cool because it also means we're pretty stupid sometimes, too. I mean, we don't have an entire continent of people afraid to row across a tiny ocean, but we've got the Palins. They're sort of like your Lannisters only exactly like your Lannisters.

Still, if this were a game of Civilization, even Gandhi would have ridden you down with his war elephants by now. Not because he wanted to hurt you, but because those elephants could teach you how to navigate using stars and take tenure-track positions at the universities you seemingly don't have. You daft fucks.

But I get it. You're too busy stabbing each other to invent the shovel and dig up all the petroleum in your soil. Maybe if we had dragons, we would have turned into a civilization run by middle school boys, too. And maybe if our winters lasted a decade, we would have also taken a few millennia off.

O, no wait, we would have eaten queso blanco nacho platters at our centrally heated Applebees until it was time to jetski.

Tighten it up,

A.

Exhibit 1.3.7

2011-05-17T10:29:00.003-05:00

Things

Mostly self-aggrandizing, sadly. But this way it's all in one place so you know where to look. Everywhere else.

* The new issue of Pank is up, and I've got a few pieces from my Sire [on]Line project in it. These are Michael Jackson, Bono, and Ghost Ronald Regan and they're mostly notable for involving one person who wrote "Billie Jean," one person who is a ghost, and one person who is not, in fact, an American.

* Quick thoughts on Thor: entertaining though I share Jon Favreau's concern that it completely destroys the rules by which his Iron Man movies were working and makes the upcoming Avengers movie seem impossibly broad. I mean, one guy is a Norse God and another guy is just really good at shooting arrows? Notably, this is the only concern I share with Mikey. I mean, we are talking about a series of films that are basically Robot Jox with better effects. He'll get over it.

* In the new The Reprint from Zine-Scene an old short-short of mine that was originally in The Southeast Review gets rewritten by the always amazing Kevin Wilson (whose upcoming novel I want to steal from heaven or wherever it's currently kept). Honored, impressed, excited, etc. Be sure to check it out.

* Sigh.

* So if you go to the new Collagist, you'll see a lot of great stuff, not least of which is Mathias's first short story, some poems by Houston-ite Russel Swensen, and a couple of great excerpts from forthcoming books. You'll also see that [SPOILER ALERT] by Laura Eve and myself won their chapbook competition. This was an accident done mostly to prevent the winner of the Collagist contest from also winning The Cupboard's contest. Unfortunately, we also won our own contest. I blame Dave and em for their lax rules.

* Joking. Cupboard contest results soon. Seriously though, I don't want to be the Jake W. Apple of the chapbook scene. I've been embarrassed into retirement.

* If you want a [SA] preview, check out the new Sixth Finch which has one and a lot of other great work up. Do it. It's not intentionally themed or anything--I don't think--but a lot of it is wonderfully apocalyptic.

* Speaking of the apocalypse, we must be about ready for another one because Jon Pack Approves or Disapproves is updating again. I love Jon Pack despite his disapproval of dipping sauce.

Exhibit 1.3.6

2011-05-15T14:37:00.004-05:00

Foul Weather

The Weather Stations by Ryan Call from Caketrain

Despite all the tornadoes and hurricanes and tsunamis of the last few years, Call's book is a shocking reminder that even more terrible things might be coming. Wind that kills, lightning that maims, sky that crumbles--the stories here aren't post-apocalyptic, they're simply apocalyptic. Worse, they're powerfully personal. So often in lesser work a story's heart shrinks as the disaster increases, but here the tragedies are always human ones. The weather here produces not destruction but terror, and it's not on insubstantial difference. You don't feel like the author is a child kicking over an anthill--he's the ant.

I was able to read this entire book on the plane yesterday which I both recommend and warn you against. Recommend because it's a great read that keeps the clouds moving quickly. Warn because this book tells you those clouds are trying to kill you and it's impossible not to believe it. Those. Clouds. Are. Trying. To. Kill. You. I honestly didn't think we were ever going to land and when we did, just a minute after I finished the last story, I was shocked when we all didn't burst into applause out of wonder for our pilot. You know it's a great book when it can re-mystify the commonplace.

And that's what impressed me most as I turned the pages and the plane rocked slightly in the air. I didn't want to land because I didn't want to leave the book's world. At that moment, we could have just floated away.

Exhibit 1.3.5

2011-05-12T12:21:00.001-05:00

Recycled Content

So I have no car and I'm pretty sure I'm dying, but that didn't stop Laura Eve and I from live tweeting Star Wars: A New Hope. Here it is, the laziest blog post yet from a guy who sometimes just posts pictures of his dog.

* Going to live-tweet Star Wars with @hoostown. I recommend you unfollow me now just like the Rebel Alliance unfollowed Emperor Palpatine.

* Laura Eve guest tweet: Live-tweeting Star Wars with @AdamWPeterson instead of working on my fan fiction piece, "What If Luke Had Picked Up Those Power Converters." *

* Instead of "A New Hope," Lucas should have changed the subtitle to "Star Wars: A PowerPoint with Robots."

* O really, Luke, "sand people are the worst?" Might be time to turn off the Fox News.

* When Alec Guinness says "evil" it has 8 syllables and takes 18 seconds. Usually he's not even done saying it when he has to say it again.

* "We don't serve their kind here." Tatooine is all racists and scrap yards. It's the Mississippi of the Star Wars universe.

* For a decade I've been trying to work "I find your lack of Faith Evans disturbing." into a casual conversation. Preferably on a date.

* I just created my own Star Wars special edition. For about 15 minutes while they're in hyperspace, the movie becomes Rush videos on YouTube.

* I will now live-tweet this Jell-O mousse cup I took a chance on at the supermarket: heavy pudding.

* I'm not saying Darth Vader is a micromanager, but I'm pretty sure he sewed the Death Star's curtains.

* Of course the garbage monster on the Death Star has a name. Also, a backstory. Also, the worst slash fiction ever. http://bit.ly/cB1dpE

* The Storm Trooper training manual includes only one rule: always say "Blast 'Em" before shooting. It's like the Empire's Miranda rights.

* Did Obi Wan really follow through on becoming more powerful after his death? Seems like he sort of just died. Same question, Jesus.

* Despite the planet-destroying starship one guy with a bo staff guards the Rebel base. Still, that system did keep my parents out of my room.

* Luke is a cocky pilot for someone who let C-3PO drive earlier. Vader lost to a guy who throws the keys to a talking little league trophy.

* Laura Eve guest tweet: Luke & Leia making eyes at each other but still not hooking up at the end of the movie makes a pretty good argument for waiting. *

And Star Wars is over. I look forward to going back and revising these tweets with new special effects in 2027. [screen wipe]

Exhibit 1.3.4

2011-05-05T16:18:00.004-05:00

This Happened

My photo. I call it: A Trailblazer on Its Side After Striking My Parked Car Illuminated by 3:00am Police Lights

Not pictured:

1) The driver and his passenger who, uh, ran, apparently
2) My totalled car
3) Me, still sort of asleep, asking the police officer if I could just have the car they left behind
4) Helpful neighbors all introducing themselves and shaking hands as they watched, possibly plotting future barbeques
5) Me, slightly less asleep, saying, No, really, let's just flip it over and I'll take it

Exhibit 1.3.3

2011-05-01T14:54:00.005-05:00

This Exists

And you need to know about it. Look, I know it's my fault for buying Pop-Tarts in the first place, and maybe I was wrong to expect so much of the good folks at Kellogg's, but this crosses a line.

I don't want to say anything controversial here, but I strongly believe this is worse than manslaughter.

My favorite part can't even be seen here which is that the recipe--O, yes, there's a real recipe on the inside of the box, in case you couldn't figure it out from the picture in the moments before you had to look away--liberally uses the word 'carefully.' You are to carefully spread the marshmallow creme. Also the peanut better. Then you are to sprinkle the "candy-coated chocolate pieces"--carefully--before carefully transferring to a wire rack.

They were trying to warn us.

Exhibit 1.3.2

2011-04-27T22:25:00.002-05:00

From Invisible Cities

Maybe my favorite?

"Cities & The Sky 1"

In Eudoxia, which spreads both upward and down, with winding alleys, steps, dead ends, hovels, a carpet is preserved in which you can observe the city’s true form. At first sight nothing seems to resemble Eudoxia less than the design of that carpet, laid out in symmetrical motives whose patterns are repeated along straight and circular lines, interwoven with brilliantly colored spires, in a repetition that can be followed throughout the whole woof. But if you pause and examine it carefully, you become convinced that each place in the carpet corresponds to a place in the city and all the things contained in the city are included in the design, arranged according to their true relationship, which escapes your eye distracted by the bustle, the throngs, the shoving. All of Eudoxia’s confusion, the mules’ braying, the lampback stains, the fish smell in what is evident in the incomplete perspective you grasp; but the carpet proves that there is a point from which the city shows its true proportions, the geometrical scheme implicit in its every, tiniest detail.

It is easy to get lost in Eudoxia: but when you concentrate and stare at the carpet, you recognize the street you were seeking in a crimson or indigo or magenta thread which, in a wide loop, brings you to the purple enclosure that is your real destination. Every inhabitant of Eudoxia compares the carpet’s immobile order with his own image of the city, an anguish of his own, and each can find, concealed among the arabesques, an answer, the story of his life, the twists of fate.

An oracle was questioned about the mysterious bond between two objects so dissimilar as the carpet and the city. One of the two objects—the oracle replied—has the form the gods gave the starry sky and the orbits in which the worlds revolve; the other is an approximate reflection, like every human creation.

For some time the augurs had been sure that the carpet’s harmonious pattern was of divine origin. The oracle interpreted in this sense, arousing no controversy. But you could, similarly, come to the opposite conclusion: that the true map of the universe is the city of Eudoxia, just as it is, a stain that spreads out shapelessly, with crooked streets, houses that crumble one upon the other amid clouds of dust, fires, screams in the darkness.

Exhibit 1.3.1

2011-04-25T08:26:00.002-05:00

The Blossom Possum

Takes it to another level.

Just for you, Dave.

Exhibit 1.2.27

2011-04-24T12:11:00.002-05:00

Look

I'm sorry. I haven't been feeling well. To make it up to you, here's a Blossom Possum:

Other things:

* I successfully identified the female lead from King Ralph within 5 seconds of seeing her in something filmed 15 years later. This, quite possibly, is the proudest moment of my life.

* I think people should talk more about how weird it is that Peter O'Toole, John Hurt, and Richard Griffiths are in King Ralph. Even 20 years later, I keep expecting the British to burn D.C. to the ground for this.

* It's like if the French made a movie called The Godpère about an effete French puppeteer who becomes the leader of the Mafia much to the chagrin of his lieutenants played by Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

* By the way, what are the odds that all of those actors (and John Goodman) would still be alive today? We may not have numbers that high.

* To this day I assume that the British monarchy is such that you can just give the crown to a really good servant if need be, sort of like passing on an out-of-style suit.

* Yeah, so maybe I've just been watching King Ralph for the past week.

Exhibit 1.2.26

2011-04-13T22:24:00.001-05:00

Blasphemous Country Classics

"I Believe in You"

Well, I dont believe that heaven waits
For only those who congregate
I'd like to think of God as love
He's down below
He's up above

Don Williams: unitarian/pro-baby.

"If Heaven Ain't a Lot Like Dixie"

If heaven ain't a lot like Dixie, I'd just as soon stay home.
If they don't have a Grand Ole Opry, like they do in Tennessee,
Just send me to hell or New York City, it would be about the same to me.

No one tell American Civil Rights Hero Charlie Pride how Bocephus feels.

Exhibit 1.2.25

2011-04-08T10:43:00.004-05:00

Things I Learned from Re-watching G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Because if you've only seen it once, there's a lot you miss. I mean, I didn't have to watch it twice, but I also didn't have to graduate from high school. I re-watched because I care. Also, because I've already used up all of this month's free articles on The New York Times and I needed to find some way to keep in touch with global politics.

Here's what I learned:

1) Water is flammable and therefore science is a lie.

2) No matter what side of the recent budget crisis you were on, there's one thing on which we can all agree: most of our tax dollars should go to building more army ninjas.

3) In any context, "nano" as a prefix means "dangerous" e.g. Nanobot, Nanopunch, Nanomom.

4) In most contexts, "nano" as a prefix also means "delicious" e.g. Nanotaco, Nanopunch, Nanomallow.

5) If you need a secret lair, the key is to build it as far underground as possible. Unless you don't want your secret lair to be destroyed. The movie offers no solutions for if you don't want your secret lair destroyed.

6) As a suffix, "nano" means "size of iPod" and nothing else ever.

7) Brendan Fraser will cameo in your movie if he gets to make all of the following expressions: O!, Come on!, [laughing head shake], [motorcycle whee].

8) Chicks who don't like you have been brainwashed.

9) If your evil organization, collective, or confederacy is capable of replacing the president with one of your own men, your other plan that involves picking a fight with an elite task force of international soldiers is probably superfluous if not downright counterproductive.

10) Seriously, Earth, Wind, and Fire was right to leave out water.

Exhibit 1.2.24

2011-04-05T20:25:00.010-05:00

On Editing a Novel #21

IT'S BEEN DONE BEFORE BUT HAS IT BEEN DONE...ON MARS? As we all know from that Al Gore documentary, America's most limited resource is heartbreaking family dramas that end with a drunken father having an epiphany about what is important while watching the sun set purple into the Western plains. If you must, blame Raymond Carver, LLC for drilling too deeply despite knowing what might poison the aquifer, but I'd rather you consider the possibility of abandoning this world of ruined plots much like our progeny will one day abandon Indiana. Instead, consider changing the setting of your novel to...Mars!

Watch how easy it is:

* A son struggles with telling his father that he doesn't want to take over the family business...on Mars!

* An alcoholic with a hilarious monkey gallivant around the country...of Mars!

* A series of people navigate interconnected stories of love and loss and...Mars!

* A scrappy group of teenagers have to fight off a foreign invasion. O, and did I mention the teenagers are...Mar!ions? I should have.

(The foreigners are still Soviets).

* A busy careerwoman discovers she has cancer...of the Mars!

* An Irishman locked out of his home wonders around Dublin..., Mars!

* Mars!...of Arabia!

* A touching story of a soldier's struggles to forget all the horror he saw on...Mars!

(Actually, that one has been done before).

* Pay it forward...to Mars!

* A young man discovers the emptiness of life in the modern corporate world until he discovers...and this is the twist...he's not on Mars!

Because Mars plots are over. Thanks, Updike.

Exhibit 1.2.23

2011-04-04T10:41:00.003-05:00

Lazy

That's what I think the Netflix Recommendation Robot is getting.

If you follow the recommendations to their logical conclusion, it goes like this:

Chinatown-->China Town
China Town-->Ghost Town
Ghost Town-->Ghost Dad

Ghost Dad-->"Daddy" by Sylvia Plath

Exhibit 1.2.22

2011-04-01T10:22:00.005-05:00

Things

* I don't know if you've noticed, but making fun of stock photography has really caught on. This, far more than my declining health or general disinterest, is why I haven't written about it in a while. Still, some fantastic examples here (thanks E).

* This is pretty great if you're a fan of The Wire. And if you're not a fan of The Wire, I really think you should get on that (Thanks H).

* The Cupboard's contest deadline was extended over the weekend and so you've now got until April 4th to submit here. Please do. Or, at a minimum, tell your father.

* Speaking of The Cupboard, we're going to be at the Houston Indie Book Fest alongside a bunch of other great presses, some fantastic readers, and, I'm told, a crepe truck.

* When I told my class about the crepe truck, one student asked with devastating seriousness: Sweet or Savory?

* I answered some questions about The Cupboard for the festival here. O, and when I say "we" are at the festival, I mean me, in the sun, eating a crepe of ambiguous savoriness. So come say hi.

* The Royals lost on opening day, but, in perhaps the brightest spot, got a good performance out of Aaron Crow. Still, I've long been aware of the folly of my optimistic season preview and the shortcomings only seem more clear now. It's possible winning 70 games with this rotation is actually impossible.

* If I'm still alive, I'll post something about my fantasy team soon. Because that seems like something I should put on the internet. In the mean time, ponder their name and mascot:

THE HAYS CODE

Exhibit 1.2.21

2011-03-30T10:23:00.004-05:00

A Primer on the Rules of Cricket, Pt. 3

(In honor of the Cricket World Cup which is apparently happening. You're probably watching. See the long ago Parts 1 and 2 here.)

21. Weather determined by a canvassing of the nobles to be inclement shall result in a fortnight's delay during which time each player shall be afforded one loaf of pudding and one hot water bottle per diem.

22. This delay shall be called by the home team a "Jammy" and the away team a "Gulliver." The groundlings need not speak of it at all.

23. Should it ever be determined who told the Australians about the game, play shall be cancelled until such time as a large pike might be acquired. Any curious Queenslanders shall be told some pishposh about it being the DARKENING INNING though, of course, the DARKENING INNING happens only in Lunius. Should it actually be the DARKENING INNING, any Queenslander with sense will be in his hovel.

24. A dropped catch is called a "Ninny."

25. Given an errant bowl, the runner is allowed to advance a number of wickets equal to but not exceeding his proximity from the ~~King~~ Queen determined by The Boy counting off every odd numbered pace until he reaches the Monarch. His bow shall not count as a pace though his failure to properly address the Monarch shall result in an immediate re-counting of the pace, this time on the even footfall.

26. In the event a match exceeds a yeoman's working week, four dullards from each team's county shall be found, greased, and set upon the pitch until such time as one hath vanquished his foes and shall, individually, be declared the winner and rewarded with a generous estate in one of the colonies or a geographically commiserate amount of tea.

27. The Prime Minister shall not be invited except at the discretion of the magistrate who can take, in exchange for the invitation, one night with the Prime Minister's ~~wife~~ spouse after the State's next masque.

28. A successful catch is called a "Ninny."

29. The digging of a trench for the purposes of tripping the elephant is, henceforth, ruled bad sportsmanship and the offending shovelman shall be repositioned atop the parapet until such time as a passing knight errant honors his dropped kerchief. He shall be given 6 kerchiefs or 4 if the beast dies.

30. Gambling is strictly prohibited for amounts larger than 18 guineas, 5 pence, 49 marbles, 2 obs, and a finger's balcots.

Exhibit 1.2.20

2011-03-23T18:56:00.001-05:00

A Canonical Poem Adapted into a Control Scheme
for a Tiger Electronic Baseball Handheld

Dante
Commedia

Run: the straight way was lost
Swing: the love that moves the sun and all the other stars

Exhibit 1.2.19

2011-03-21T12:19:00.004-05:00

Things

* The indispensable NewPages blogged about The Cupboard (and our contest) here. Very grateful for the coverage from a source we (and everyone else) use all the time.

* O, yeah, thanks for asking: we are having a contest. Tell your friends, please. Only 10 days left.

* Speaking of us, Dave's book got a great review from Publisher's Weekly here and em's taken a tenure-track job here. Go Anchormen!

(Serious question: that's an awesome mascot, but what do they call the women's teams? Are they the Anchorwomen? Is it too much to hope they're the RI College Lady Anchormen?)

* While D and e were accomplishing things, I was making a snarky joke at one noted MFA program ranker's expense here mostly to see what would happen. Um, results as expected.

* Seriously though, Glenn's tournament thing is really fun. Read his blog.

* I've always appreciated how Jeff Tweedy buys unlit cigarettes. I bet Lou Reed doesn't.

Exhibit 1.2.18

2011-03-17T08:07:00.001-05:00

Royals Preview

Look. This is happening. I'm sorry.

So, in summary, here's what the Royals did this off-season: traded away their best player for a package of prospects somewhere between underwhelming and whelming, mostly stayed away from the free agent market except for one smart signing, and fully committed to the youth movement they'd only been sort of casually seeing for the last half decade. Basically, the Royals are that guy who suddenly realized they're middle aged and living in a terrible town and that the options available to them aren't as grand as they might have been the day after their high school graduation. So he finally sold his expensive but aging Corvette, stopped spending his paychecks on electric guitars he could only use to play "Enter Sandman" on, and used the saved money to replace his beleaguered girlfriend's promise ring with a diamond engagement ring.

These are good things. These are always good things.

That it should have happened a decade ago is beside the point. Here's what matters: the Royals, like this guy, finally get it. They don't have all the options, and, even better to know, they might finally realize that nobody does. That fallacy destroys teams--and people--by making them think their job is to find the correct choice rather than the best choice. There is no correct choice and, at least in the Royals case, if there is one, somebody else is going to get there first. So the Royals, needing an outfield bat, would make their offer to Torii Hunter or whomever, get rejected, and then spend $36 million dollars on Jose Guillen because he was next on the list (it's also probably important to note here the Royals suck at making lists). They sought the correct thing rather than the best thing--which in this case would have really been anything other than giving that much money to a washed up, HGH using headcase--and they did it because they cared to much about perceptions. Without a plan (or confidence or the ability to, you know, win baseball games) the Royals could only win media battles. This seemed like the correct thing, to be able to say, "Well, sure, we overpaid, but now you guys can't say we're not serious about competing."

It took 10 years for someone to finally realize that a team serious about competing would, well, compete, that the Royals don't have all the choices, they only have theirs, that of the choices they do have some are better than others but none can be called correct unless they lead to the World Series, that being called correct doesn't matter anyway, that only wins matter.

This last bit--the seeking of approval from outside sources who are at best disinterested and at worst openly hostile to a small, incompetent team--still worries me a little. You see, the Royals have the best farm system in baseball. They may have the best farm system since people started keeping track of these things. Everyone thinks so and rightfully the Royals are proud of this fact, a little too proud maybe. A smart organization wouldn't care or would only care insomuch as they make it their goal to be #1 year after year. The Royals...well...we'll see.

To see the danger here, one need only look at the Royals epic Gil Meche signing. Let's chart the conventional wisdom here:

2006 - The signing - "The Royals are stupid."
2007 - Meche is good - "The Royals are okay."
2008 - Meche is better - "The Royals are brilliant."
2009 - Meche's arm falls off - "The Royals are unlucky."
2010 - Meche's arm fails to reattach - "The Royals are stupid again."
2011 - Meche shockingly retires - "The Royals are lucky."

And here's the thing: it's all true yet none of it matters. The Meche contract was both brilliant (they really did "fix" him and turn him into the player they paid for) and stupid (he was never going to single-handedly put them into contention). It was, in the end, a big waste of time and money and attention yet the Royals chose to ride this wave of perception rather than simply focus on winning games. They were defensive then geniuses then, I guess, they were just Odysseus getting blown around the Mediterranean by fate. They wanted to be seen as having made the correct decision when really they should have made a decision, lived with the consequences, and then tried to continuing making decisions in service of a coherent plan.

Now these prospects again have the Royals feeling like geniuses and taking thinly veiled shots at anyone who ever doubted "the Process." But prospects fail or get injured or maybe, even with the abundance of talent in the system, there's still just not enough there to turn the franchise into a winner. Who knows what will happen. I also know this: at least at the moment, the Royals are doing it right. The question now is if they keep doing it right or if they again find themselves competing over perceptions when they should be competing on the field.

Can they do it? I don't know. It's so easy for a team to get fixated on what they should do or would do or are supposed to do rather than what they can do. Nothing has likely changed about their reliance on old timey baseball wisdom that might as well chalk everything up to magic (or "grit") and I wish they'd go about their business with a little more of a yeoman's humility rather than a scared child's tendency to plead for attention then lash out when it's negative. Still, despite some considerable apprehensions, it's a wonderful time to be a Royals fan.

The Prospects

Just a quick top 10 done with no scouting knowledge at all.

1. Eric Hosmer - Not even my favorite player, really, but do guys like this ever miss?
2. Mike Moustakas - I do worry about the strikeouts and the (lack of) walks.
3. Wil Myers - Part of me still wishes they would have kept him at catcher.
4. Mike Montgomery - If he's healthy, he's nearly unstoppable.
5. Danny Duffy - Threw a 59 MPH curve in a game the other day.
6. John Lamb - O, why not. Great stuff, great makeup.
7. Christian Colon - Everyone says he'll be solid like it's a bad thing.
8. Jake Odorizzi - Curious about how slowly he's moved though.
9. Brett Eibner - Could be a poor man's Sizemore. Or he could never hit.
10. Cheslor Cuthbert - A lifetime away but sounds great.

The Roster

C - The less said about this position the better. You always hate to root against a guy getting healthy, but at my darkest moments I do wish Jason Kendall's surgery would have been performed at the Cleveland Institute for Staph Infections.

1B/DH - Kila Ka'aihue and Billy Butler will switch off between the two. Nothing may be more indicative of the Royals finally getting it than the fact that Kila is not only in their plans, but that they seem set on giving him a full year. The old Royals would have fed him to the Sarlacc after his first 0-4 then started the Sarlacc for the rest of the year even though everyone knows Sarlacci can't hit lefties and never walk. Or something.

O, and Billy Butler is good. I see 30 HR this year. I do.

2B - Chris Getz. I really just don't care about him at all. He's sort of like that student who I forget is in my class until I have to give his paper a D. Here's a sign the Royals don't get it: Getz's name is sometimes mentioned as a possible leadoff bat because he's vaguely fast. Let me save you the trouble of looking it up: his career OBP is .315.

SS - Alcides Escobar. I can't help it, I like this guy even though he hasn't played a game for the Royals yet. I'm a sucker for toolsy prospects and if we'd gotten this guy for Greinke a year ago, everyone would have been thrilled. Plus, his name sounds like he borrowed it from Scarface. I'm on board.

3B - Mike Aviles. He's good. Wilson Betemit is a nice bat of the bench, too. Yeah, this will work out just fine. Plus, look for Mike Moustakas to step up at some point and move Aviles over to 2B after Alcides "White Knife" Escobar takes Chris Getz for a walk in the Everglades.

LF - Alex Gordon. God, I have thoughts. Here's what I've been saying about Gordon recently: he's either going to shock people or fall apart completely. And this is the season. I don't think he's going to be just average. There's too much talent and too much that says his problems are mental. I think he either becomes a .280/.370/.500 guy or is somewhere in Nebraska hanging out with Eric Crouch next year. And, frankly, I still think he's going to put it together. Yes, I know this is stupid, but I don't care. He's the one player on the Royals who knows how to take a walk, the power is real, and those two things usually lead to success.

CF - Lorenzo Cain! He's my new favorite Royal. I don't even know if he's good, but between him and Alcides "Blow Back" Escobar, the Royals won the name side of the Greinke trade. And, yeah, I think he's a little good, too. Another toolsy player with some important skills (defense, speed, solid onbase), I think he's going to be a key part of the Royals future. Unfortunately, that future likely starts in July after Melky Cabrera eats his way to the bench.

RF - Sigh.

SP #1 - Luke Hochevar is best known for looking vaguely like my Royals buddy Anders, but occasionally he's a solid pitcher. It's not Luke's fault--I think he'll have a good year--but every time I think this Royals team might be better than people are talking about, I remember that he's going to be the opening day starter. No offense to this rotation, but, um, there are holes. Luke is a fine #4 and I think he'll turn into a solid #3. If he's your opening day starter, however, it means your #5 is going to be some donut like Sean O'Sullivan.

SP #2 - Jeff Francis. This is the smart free agent signing. Really no downside here and, in fact, a whole lot of upside. It does make me wonder why the Royals weren't making signings like this before. Or was Brett Tomko this signing and we're all just pretending otherwise? Best to move on, probably.

SP #3 - Bruce Chen. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Bruce Chen is the best Chinese-Panamanian pitcher in the game.

SP #4 - Vin Mazzaro. Hey, any time you can deal your 2nd best position player for a guy who can't beat out noted donut Sean O'Sullivan for a roster spot, you've got to do it. Seriously, there's a strange silence in Royalsland over the David DeJesus trade. Yeah, they had to trade him. It made sense. But this trade? Making less sense by the day as it becomes clear Vin Mazzaro isn't very good and no one ever thought he was. You can sign guys like this everywhere. Why trade for one? Seriously, it's like the Royals answered a Craigslist ad from someone who wanted a new car stereo and offered to trade next Tuesday. Enjoy driving around blaring OMG, Billy!

Royalsland, incidentally, is Scandinavia's worst country though features a strangely compelling ride at Epcot.

SP #5 - I did some looking into this, and the Royals aren't going to need a fifth starter until mid-April 2013.

Fine, if you must know, it's (Hiram) Kyle Davies or proto-cruller Sean O'Sullivan.

The best part about detailing out the rotation is that at various points I realized I was probably getting the numbers wrong, but it honestly doesn't matter. It'll go Hoch, Francis, and then the next three spots can be filled in any order by any of those pitchers. And don't worry, that will happen. It's like a game of musical chairs at the vertigo ward.

(How are my similes doing today? Feeling a little off).

Bullpen - Here we go. I like the bullpen this year no matter how it shakes out. Say what you will about the rest of the Royals prospects, but they've got a wealth of young, cheap, and intriguing arms for the bullpen. Sure, it's the least important place to have prospects, but it does make it fun. In particular, I'm excited to see Tim Collins who is shorter than your sister but throws in the mid to upper 90s as a lefty. Your sister can't do that.

One bit of sadness here: Joakim Soria no longer wants to be called the Mexicutioner due to the ongoing drug violence in Mexico. I completely understand this, of course, but it's the end of a glorious era.

(Brief aside on people who want to trade Soria: I get it. Maybe they should. Hell, if they did it for that Montero package, I might even be excited about it. But keep in mind the correct vs. best choice thing again. Stats give us the illusion of thinking we know the correct choice, but it doesn't excuse the reality of the situation which is that of the limited options available to the Royals, the best one likely involves some continuity. The Royals can build a winner by trading Soria, sure. They can build one without trading him, too. There's not one correct way, and, in this particular case, I'm unconvinced trading Soria makes winning easier).

The Division

1. Minnesota - The window is closing, I think, but they can win it one more year.
2. Detroit - Miguel Cabrera can do all that drunk?
3. Chicago - Because someone has to be third.
4. Kansas City - Despite that rotation, I think there's some talent on this team and quite a bit of flexibility to either move parts and/or bring up prospects after the All-Star break.
5. Cleveland - Or they could end up 4th or cease to be. It doesn't really matter.

The Season

So here's how I see it playing out: a middling first couple of months and a lot of games where the starters don't make it to the 6th inning. Still, a sense of optimism as the minors continue to produce (though not at last year's level) and Moustakas eventually joins the major league club. Already well out of contention by the break, a few other guys (Crow and Duffy?) get looks before September and maybe a few more guys come up around the trade deadline as the few remaining veterans get shipped out.

Breakout performers: Butler, Gordon
Beats expectations: "No Pablo" Escobar, Hoch, and, sigh, Francouer (granted, expectations are so low they are currently recording an album of graceful indie rock songs)
Regresses: Betemit, Chen
Gets traded: Melky, Francouer, Francis
Comes back way too early: Jason Kendall
Proves to be bad: Getz, O'Sullivan, Mazzaro, Kendall
Remains a mystery: Davies, Kila and, to a degree, Aviles
Never gets a chance: Maier, Dyson, Blanco

And there we have it, 2.5k words on the Royals. Really, all you need to know is that the real test will be whether or not General Manager Dayton Moore can avoid screwing the roster (or the payroll) up, whether Ned Yost can prove worthy of managing into the team's rosy future, and whether the kids continue to climb the organizational ladder toward the majors. Sooner or later decisions are going to have to be made about which prospects to keep or trade and how to build the roster around them, but for now, at least, Royals fans are drowning in hope rather than tears.

Seriously though, Lorenzo Cain! He sounds like a guy who beat up a train!

Record: 75-87

Exhibit 1.2.17

2011-03-15T12:13:00.003-05:00

Things

* So I've got a Sire Line up at Everyday Genius right here. You should do what I do and have EG in your Google Reader. You will not be disappointed.

* That Sire Line is mostly notable for being the first one in the series. There are now 50. I have no idea how that project went from something inspired by a picture in Dave's bathroom to that .jpg I created at work (sorry, Mark!) to this terrible, long ridiculous thing.

* I'll write more about both of these bookish soonish, I'm sure, but last week I read Mat Johnson's Pym and received Ryan Call's The Weather Stations which I'm going to start today-ish. You're going to want them both. Trust me.

* The Cupboard is still having a contest. Tell your friends, submit, etc. The deadline is March 31st.

Exhibit 1.2.16

2011-03-13T12:14:00.005-05:00

Thesis Defense

(Look, I've been sick and grading and writing and watching Castle. No excuses. In return for you not saying anything, I thought I'd offer you this picture of Thesis Defense. It's funnier than anything else I could think of. Also, I plan on writing a Royals preview this weekend so look out for that).

Yes, we made our own t-shirt uniforms. No, no other teams have these. Yes, I put mine on a pillow and hug it while falling asleep.

Other things of interest:

* The font is Futura Bold. We spend a lot of time telling people that.

* My number is 4. Alex Gordon's number. Like Alex, I've spent the spring working on my game in the hopes of turning my career around. Unlike Alex, I'm not actually going to do it.

* I cropped off my legs though you can get a general sense of their color by looking at the white on my shorts. Those aren't stripes, those are view strips.

* Or maybe you don't know which one I am. In that case, assume I'm the one who looks like Running Scared-era Billy Crystal.

* Yes, I'm drinking a Guinness. I don't know what it is about strenuous activity, but all I want to do afterward--once the vertigo has slowed--is drink the thickest beer I can find. Usually it's a Boddington's.

* You'd think this would cause me to realize that there aren't any good British basketball players and that this might be a sign, but no, it does not make me realize that.

* It does make me hum "Live Forever" and want to smoke, however.

* We've got a week off for spring break and playoffs start Tuesday night. Between now and then I'm going to work on my shot and font selection.

Exhibit 1.2.15

2011-03-05T17:00:00.004-06:00

Basketball Stats

Thesis Defense vs. the Refs

(Our team had gotten some low sportsmanship scores from the referees of our last couple of games and so we were in danger of being held out of the playoffs for being jerks. Apparently some players argued a call or two. Not me. If the refs even look at me, I feel chagrined and immediately want to hand the other team the ball. Thankfully, I never have the ball so this doesn't really hold us back).

50 some hugs we gave the other team, the refs, random passersby
Condescending the level of nice we achieved by the end of the game
1 shot attempt during warmups where I missed the hoop
1 girls that shot attempt hit in the stands
1 dribbles
0 points scored on me due to my stifling defense
7 players we had which made it much, much better
40 seconds left when the game was mercy ruled
35 seconds of running I had left in me when this happened
More than 85 utterances of good game
5 fans in attendance
Reclined my demeanor on the bench according to fans
18 the number of the player who said he was going to guard me
0 the number of minutes this player spent guarding me after he put it together that I wasn't going to shoot, move, or generally try to do anything other than rest when our team was on offense

Thesis Defense is 4-0 and, assuming our performative fawning didn't upset the refs, on our way to the playoffs.

Exhibit 1.2.14

2011-03-03T15:47:00.005-06:00

Migraine Symptoms

Migraines never actually hurt. If you have something that hurts, it isn't a migraine. It's something else. Probably the terror measles. I'm very sorry for your family's upcoming loss.

You're only having a migraine if you're experiencing the following:

* A phenomenal deal at Papa Johns

* A reluctance to admit you're watching Castle

* Poprocks tongue

* A sudden and profound appreciation for those cookies they serve with coffee on airplanes

* Hand tremors

* Also, Tremor tremors

* A greater than normal avoidance for grading papers

* The ol' jimmy ghost

* Some terrible story you wrote that's about a columbarium

* The sensation of having recently learned the word columbarium

* Owls, everywhere, owls

Exhibit 1.2.13

2011-03-02T09:03:00.003-06:00

New Volume

"It was as if someone had opened a door for us.”

Bully / Bullied

James Scott by Ryan Call
Now Available

1 tape-bound volume
Book Design by William Todd Seabrook
Cover Design by Beth Sullivan
Cover Photos by Steve May

$15/year subscription, $5/individual

Bully/Bullied by James Scott and Ryan Call is now available from The Cupboard. Two stories, one story.

*ABOUT THE VOLUME*
One tough kid and another tough kid and two stories, told side-by-side, about what it is we might want from one another, how it feels to just be left alone. Nick Gradowski is a bully. Jeremy Haskins is bullied. Tanya Wheatley is tough as shit. The Winter Carnival is a bright beacon, a place for handjobs and blue polar bears. If there are two sides to every story, Bully / Bullied wants to find a third, a fourth, a way out from our actions and their consequences.

Read excerpts here.

*ABOUT THE AUTHORS*
James Scott's fiction has been published in One Story, American Short Fiction, Quick Fiction and other journals, and is forthcoming in Post Road. His work has been nominated for the Best New American Voices Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and anthologized by flatmancrooked. He has received awards to Yaddo, the Millay Colony, the Sewanee Writers' Conference and the New York State Summer Writers' Institute. Currently, James writes for the music magazine Under the Radar and teaches workshops at Grub Street.

Ryan Call's stories appear in Caketrain, New York Tyrant, Mid-American Review, The Collagist, and elsewhere. He and his wife live in Houston.

*SUBSCRIBE*
The Cupboard mails 4 volumes per year at a cost of $15. Subscribe here.

Individual volumes, including past volumes from Mathias Svalina, Caia Hagel, Michael Stewart, Joshua Cohen, Amanda Goldblatt, and Andrew Borgstrom are available for $5.

*CONTEST*
The Cupboard’s First Contest!

Reading Feb 1 - March 31

Prize: $500 & publication
Judge: Michael Martone

The Cupboard is holding its first-ever contest. The winning author will receive $500 and the manuscript will be published as an upcoming volume. We're looking for prose submissions between 4k and 10k words. In the past, we've published short stories, essays, collections of flash fiction and prose poems, and combinations thereof. Send us your best work. Submissions are received and read anonymously, and all submissions are eligible for regular publication.

To submit, go to: http://www.thecupboardpamphlet.org/submit.html

Also, contest submitters are eligible for a discounted subscription to The Cupboard.

Subscribers are still welcome to submit at any time. We will also be holding an open submission period this May.

*OUR NEXT VOLUME*
The Buff by Anne Marie Rooney will be the next volume of The Cupboard. Look for it this spring.

www.thecupboardpamphlet.org

Exhibit 1.2.12

2011-02-28T08:52:00.007-06:00

Thing

* I have a short(er) story in the new issue of StoryQuarterly. It comes from a time when I thought 1,000 word stories were the future. Now I know that the real future is 500 word stories. It was a simpler time, 2009.

* Anyway, my thing is mostly notable for being a one-note joke about having to harvest a cowboy if you want a pair of cowboy boots. Sort of like how I had to kill that elephant to get these stylish tusks you've noticed me wearing. I did not, however, have to kill it with my bare hands. That I did for me. Also, to best Orwell. The pussy.

* Now I've made myself sad thinking about animal violence. I'm against it.

* I'm still reading through the issue--it's fairly massive--but so far my favorite story actually has considerable animal violence (or at least animal death). Bethany Reece's "The Dog Dies" won me over anyway. A collection of different dog deaths, it's terribly sad but funny and touching in all the right ways. I didn't want to like it, but I couldn't help it, not when it includes lines about trying to slap a dog soul. It's hard to explain why that works, but it does. I'm a fan.

* After, in penance, I stared at a picture of Brett's dog soul for an hour:

Exhibit 1.2.11

2011-02-26T20:33:00.003-06:00

Basketball Stats

Thesis Defense vs. [I Have No Idea What Their Name Was and They Were Mostly Memorable for Being Incredibly Ethnically Diverse As if They Met While Filming a Public Service Announcement about Tolerance]

.2 meals eaten the day of the game
1 sub for our team
30+ minutes played because of this
30+ times I thought I might die
1000 times I shuffleran down the court like a wounded Shaq
0 times died
1 very self-conscious use of "Infinity" by a teammate
1 alley oop thrown to me (no, really. Sadly, the pass hit the rim)
1 shot made
5 teammates who spontaneously cheered when this happened
Mixed my feelings on making a shot but having it universally acknowledged to be such an accomplishment that it needed to be celebrated as if I'd just learned a very valuable lesson about tolerance

Thesis Defense is 3-0

Exhibit 1.2.10

2011-02-23T18:38:00.004-06:00

Wieland

(Yep, another post on books. If you don't care, you'll probably enjoy this hyper-literal video of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson's "Luckenbach, Texas." I know I did.

)

Charles Brockden Brown's novel makes two things clear: 1) the gothic is integral to American literature and 2) we should have seen M. Night Shyamalan coming. O, fine, a third thing: voice throwing is the world's deadliest talent.

Why America couldn't have produced compelling social novels is unclear to me, but her earliest books all seem to be obsessed with darkness and horror and the unsettling nature of life on the new continent. Without definitive social classes, nobody seems to know who to trust and so everyone is a rake or a murderer or some deviant ventriloquist. Wieland came out less than 15 years before Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, but they don't feel like they exist in the same world. And, I suppose, they don't.

Austen has her balls and parlors while Brockden Brown's America feels like a free for all. There is still a moral order, just not one that anybody feels comfortable asserting except when it's too late. At first the book even seems progressive. The titular Wieland is obsessed with reason and rationality rather than his father's odd, Puritanical religion. His sister lives alone without comment and serves as the book's narrator. Everyone, basically, feels like a free citizen in a land ruled by liberty rather than class or superstition.

O, then weird things start happening and then it all goes to hell. The brother no longer trusts his wife. The sister, too, is spurned by her suitor for being a hussy. One character believes God is telling him to kill everyone. It's only after these things start happening does the claustrophobia of the early pages seem suffocating. America, in a word, was a little boring.

The Shyamalan twist is that some and possibly all of this turmoil was caused by a passing "biloquist" who helpfully explains how through a series of very reasonable coincidences, he was forced to throw his voice, a power he laments and had sworn not to use (it being too powerful. Something _________ must have realized a long time ago [___________ being where I would put the name of a famous ventriloquist if there were any {O,shit, Jeff Dunham. Well, I'm still not giving him the satisfaction}]). In any case, this wizard stops short of confessing to causing Wieland to murder his family, but it doesn't really matter. The sister flees back to Europe where there's still evil but it's easier to recognize.

So what was wrong with America that this is where our imaginations immediately went? It's tough to say, though there seems to be some reaction not only to the wilderness surrounding the colonies but to the breakdown of social order caused by democracy. This breakdown, which was hardly as severe as it must have seemed, is a little ridiculous to a modern reader--as is the one moment of spontaneous combustion--but the young country seems to have experienced a lot of terror in the space between reason and freewill. O, we might be able to reason our way into explanation (it's usually ventriloquism) but that doesn't mean some of us won't fall back on superstition and violence and how will we know who those people are until they're approaching us with axes?

Exhibit 1.2.9

2011-02-22T09:09:00.003-06:00

Basketball Stats

Thesis Defense (Us) vs. Some Law Students

14 minutes
0 shots missed
0 shots attempted
∞ claps
8 attempts to give myself the nickname "Infinity"
1 rebound
1 steal
1 assist
4 times asked if everyone wouldn't just rather play halfcourt
18 unfair jokes about the other team's LSAT scores
18 number of those jokes made safely from the bench
0 minutes of practice or cardio work before next game
2 beers immediately after the game
6 times got confused which way we were going but it didn't matter since I didn't have the ball and no one was paying attention to me so it was totally cool

Thesis Defense is 2-0

Exhibit 1.2.8

2011-02-19T19:15:00.003-06:00

The Right Bar

Here's how you know if you've found it:

1) Do they have advertisements over the urinals?

If yes, good.

If no, you're at a Denny's.

If you don't know, you're a girl.

2) Do medical researchers feel like these advertisements would be a good place to find crystal meth addicts interested in treatment?

If yes, good.

If no, you might still be at a Denny's because that's where the addicts with no interest in treatment hang out.

If you don't know, don't look into it too hard because I want those gift certificates.

3) Are the advertisements a little wordier than one might expect given that they are intended to reach urinating crystal meth addicts?

If yes, good. You've found a bar you can trust to look out for your health.

If no, those colorful breakfast photos on the Denny's menu offer their own kind of treatment.

If you're not sure, seriously, do you think those gift certificates are to Yankee Candle?

Exhibit 1.2.7

2011-02-16T13:35:00.003-06:00

Things

You know that week everyone has where they have to read Anna Karenina, the Ramayana, the Aeneid, Wieland, Sula, and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym? Of course you don't. Nobody else has that week. I have that week. It's now. Don't bother me. Here are things:

* The Cupboard continues to hold a contest. Tell your friends to submit here.

* Speaking of The Cupboard, Dave and I are no longer alone. emily danforth has come on board as a co-editor. She cries when people don't submit to our contest.

* Two of my Houston friends have new online journals. Be sure to submit to, eventually read, and generally appreciate Owl Eye Review and Little Grid. Hooray for doing things.

* You know what you shouldn't read? The Aeneid. Nothing against it, just don't.

* O, there's a new issue of elimae, and I'm in it here. This person liked my piece and for that I'm grateful. Otherwise it's only notable for being part of my whole Sire Lines of America thing, a project I showed the logo for way back when and then put away for a long time. It's back. Look for more online. I'm really into online all of a sudden, mostly because I wish I could add more links to this bullet.

Exhibit 1.2.6

2011-02-10T22:52:00.000-06:00

I Read This

I Should Get This

Well, okay, probably not a gold medal from the 2006 Winter Olympics, but I feel like I deserve something. I know reading the book is its own reward, but mostly I'm talking about having hauled it to and around Washington D.C. It's heavy, in other words. And I don't mean emotionally, I mean it weighs almost as much as my laptop. No, that's not exactly as memorable as winning the luge, but it's not so far off either. I'd settle for a bronze from Lillehammer.

As for the book, what can I say that hasn't been said. It's great. I prefer the small perfection of Jane Austen--whose work the book greatly resembles through the first two sections--but if you have ever wished she occasionally left the sitting room and wrote epic novels about a bunch of Russians, here's your book. After those early sections, it's as much social commentary as it a social novel but only occasionally does it feel didactic (sadly, one of those places is the ending but if you've made it that far, I imagine you've already given yourself over to it). Tolstoy obviously believes something about peasants and Christianity and hypocrisy and honor, but it's shocking how beside the point all of that is to understanding the novel. Mostly, it's hard not to read these portions of the novel without being all too aware of the wave that's coming through history to take all of these people out. Every time Levin started going on about not educating workers, I screamed, "Look out, they're coming to kill your children!" at the book.

(By the way, this completely ruined how smart and sensitive I was supposed to look while performatively reading it at coffee shops).

Around all that philosophy though is a really remarkable portrayal of humanity. There's no overstating it: I can't think of another book that has so accurately portrayed the human soul. All the contradictions and self-betrayals and doubt and relief--it's what allows a book like this to transcend its philosophy and its timeliness and give reason to the epic social novel. Yeah, it's never going to be my favorite kind of novel, but I can certainly understand the appeal of trying to signpost a moment with a monument big enough to be seen through history.

Exhibit 1.2.5

2011-02-09T10:27:00.004-06:00

On Haircuts

(This is me gearing up to try to write some nonfiction someday. Well, not really. I just don't know what else to post about and this is what's been on my mind for the last few months. This and thoughts on the NFL draft. Those I'll keep to myself lest the Bengals find out about them).

I hate getting my hair cut. You might have noticed. This might be why you hate me. There are plenty of reasons and this is as good as any other. And you probably like getting your haircut. That's fine. You're wrong.

And I think I don't like haircuts because I wait so long to get one that it turns into a frightening reimagining of my head. There's something really embarrassing about walking out of a salon looking like a different person. It feels showy. I'd gone in enjoying my slow tide of hair waves and it was only when they led to a great embarrassment than the haircut itself that I had to break down. Every time I leave the salon thinking that, this time, I'll be back in a month and it won't be a big deal. Then somehow we'll have come around to the same season, and I won't think anything is wrong with maybe having to wear a headband while playing basketball.

I wasn't always like this. I loved the guy who cut my hair in Lincoln (Clint!) but that's because I knew him and could talk music in the chair. In Houston, though, I've completely fallen apart. I need to do something about this. I'm not above getting married just so somebody is there to remind me to schedule an appointment. I'll do it. You watch me.

Actually, just watch my head and I'll watch yours. It will be the opposite of hate and I don't care if the Bengals find out.

Exhibit 1.2.4

2011-02-07T10:52:00.004-06:00

Home

I took exactly two pictures during the 5 days I was in D.C., one in my first hour there, one in my last.

Picture one:

This was on the Metro map when I arrived, proving once again that people from Texas are jerks everywhere. Not pictured: me writing it. I don't know how this state got to me, but it probably involved breakfast tacos.

Picture two:

This was my suitcase on the way home which was 70% Cupboards, 20% Anna Karenina, and 10% clothes, proving once again that I'm awesome at packing everywhere. Not pictured: me wearing 5 shirts and all my socks.

Exhibit 1.2.3

2011-02-01T19:43:00.003-06:00

Letter to an American Farmer: Shut Up

I can't say I ever had to read much colonial history in the past, but I've had to delve into a bit of it while studying the American Gothic. I've realized this: colonial Americans are the worst people to have ever existed at any time in the history (and presumably in the future) of this planet.

Here's what's wrong with them:

* They had names like Cotton and Prudence.

* Their definition of virtue seems to be basically don't act too smart or be poor or be Indian or die suddenly. If you do any of those things, you're a jerk.

* They believed moles and warts were for suckling the devil.

(This brings me to my theory that what happened to Enrique Iglesias's face was that he accidentally danced into a wormhole that took him back in time to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the only way to avoid a good drowning was to remove his mole and call himself Prudence. It's a new theory).

* Whale oil doesn't make sense. You just boil whale and it turns into whale oil? Do all parts of whale produce oil equally? What do you even use it for in a pre-mechanical time? It's just weird, like if you boiled Ben Roethlisberger you'd get a big barrel of quarterback oil women would dab on their necks. Well, probably not women. Maybe you could trade it for some sleazy molasses though.

* And I think this is the heart of it: they seemed really bored. It's not exactly shocking when you read about all the housewives having been on opium because the alternative seemed to be to hang around the meeting house pondering where exactly your neighbors were hiding their devil teat.

Exhibit 1.2.2

2011-01-26T11:56:00.008-06:00

Re-signed for 2011

I have once again made the foolish decision to play in a basketball league. On the roster I'm listed as G/F which I'm pretty sure is some kind of joke. As you can see in the picture above, I play in jeans and a polo. At half-time I take tea and ask after the wickets. When I do get in the game, I wear a prescription motorcycle helmet.

But I'm going to try to improve this year so I drew up some plays.

This one is called "Isosceles." It's where I sort of walk in a triangle around the three point line so that my own teammates are confused enough by my movements to not pass me the ball.

This one is called "Why is the whistle lady counting at me?" No, seriously, why?

This one is called, "Free Throw." It's where I stand while someone else makes free throws (not able to be expressed by diagramming: me clapping furiously).

This one is a defensive play called, "I Try to Have a Conversation with a Teammate While My Guy Scores."

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go practice the most important play of all, "Signaling for a Sub When Too Winded to Speak or Move My Arms."

Exhibit 1.2.1

2011-01-25T10:19:00.001-06:00

Best Movie Quotes to Pretend Are in The Great Gatsby

* "Here's looking at you, kid." -- Tom Buchanan to Myrtle

* "Forget it, James, it's North Dakota." -- Dad Gatsby

* "Love means never having to say you're sorry." -- Daisy

* "It was beauty killed the beast." -- Owl Eyes

* "We're going to need a bigger boat." -- Dan Cody

* "I'm walking here! I'm walking here!" -- Myrtle

* "You had me at hello." -- Nick

* "Nobody puts Baby in a corner." -- Jordan

* "I'll have what she's having." -- Wolfsheim

Exhibit 1.1.27

2011-01-19T18:13:00.003-06:00

Things

* A nice review of Andrew Borgstrom's Explanations here.

* And another one here.

* I guess what I'm saying is, you should probably order it here.

* In all seriousness, this volume has gotten a great response and we at The Cupboard are really excited about it. Many thanks to all the kind reviewers spreading the word.

* In non-Cupboard news, Royals' pitcher Gil Meche walked away from $12.4 million dollars because he couldn't help the team this year. No, really, he retired instead of taking money he was owed on his contract. To be honest, I don't know if it's honorable, exactly, but it's certainly unique. Not that it's not honorable, just that I think Gil earned that money whether or not he was injured, and I'd rather see it in the pocket of a player who carried the Royals for two seasons than in the owner's.

* O well. Good for Gil. Sad to see him go, but it's the rare athlete who honestly assesses himself and does what he thinks he's obligated to do. In a fair world, the Royals' owners would reward his behavior by paying him some/most of the money anyway. As much as this ever happens--and it never happens--usually an injury settlement is involved. The Royals claim that's not happening so I guess all Meche earns in the final year of his career is a lot of respect.

* Yesterday I heard an elderly professor use the words 'hullabaloo' 'poppycock' and 'Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.' I just thought you should know that.

* It was a weird class.

Exhibit 1.1.26

2011-01-15T13:17:00.002-06:00

House (Boat) Party

I'm a bit in trouble on this book because I read it a couple of weeks back, couldn't think of a take on it at the time, and now feel like I should say something. Um, it won the Booker? That's worth something isn't it?

[Goes and checks to see if David Mitchell has won one, sees that he hasn't, decides it's worth nothing]

So, yep, people living in boats along the Thames, somewhat focused around a young Canadian mother and her two daughters, one a moody pre-teen, one adopted from St. Julian's School for Precocious Tots. In fact, I'm not entirely sure this entire book wasn't written in anticipation of movie version to launch the career of a not-yet-conceived Dakota Fanning. She's smart like an adult but whimsical like a child! Her idiosyncrasies are adorable! Just imagine a six-year old jumping rope in a dress and rain boots making intelligent observations about humanity and you've got a pretty good idea.

Anyway, there's something great about the carefree wandering of the omniscient narration and the characters aren't completely without interest. And I suppose living on a boat in the 60s must have been more scandalous than I'm giving it credit for, but I can't help but compare this book to Drabble's which had a lot more to say about the age, class, and country.

Maybe this is the way to put it: a lot of the novels I've read recently have been short but this is the only one that felt slight.

Exhibit 1.1.25

2011-01-14T10:49:00.002-06:00

The Western

A fun book that didn't take me much longer to read than the new movie took to watch, and it's easy to see why so many people love it. I certainly did.

(Quick movie comparison: almost identical with a great deal of the dialogue coming directly from the book, one short and unimportant addition, and, oddly, a few minor plot points changed, which both solves some tiny oddities and creates a few new ones).

Like a lot of the books I've read recently, it's heavily voice driven. That's probably not an accident given that they're all for classes taught by the same person, but True Grit stands out for the oddity of its retrospective narration through the eyes of a 14-year-old girl on a manhunt for her father's killer. That conceit alone could and does take this book a long way, but its the absolute appropriateness of her position that makes it compelling. Mattie is by far the smartest and most honorable character and in the running for the toughest. Her competition is all larger-than-life western characters, and so she is both straightman to the genre conventions around her and the wide-eyed gaze that creates them.

It seems a shame to even talk about the book this way. It's just good. Exciting and funny and unsentimental right up until the stoicism of the genre breaks to show the character Mattie has never learned to hide.

Exhibit 1.1.24

2011-01-13T16:18:00.005-06:00

A Perfectly Lovely Book

I don't have much more to say about it though I guess some comment should be made about just how odd Margaret Drabble's book's plotting is. There's a lot here that could be conflict but isn't, just as the primary conceit of the book (a not particularly young but pretty and highly educated woman gets pregnant her first time having sex) could be treated as some kind of "ironical" misfortune but isn't. In fact, early on two characters discuss their pregnancies in terms of Thomas Hardy's Life's Little Ironies and their differing conclusions inform the book only slightly less than the fact that, in both cases, everything worked out perfectly. ...and everything worked out perfectly is a strange concept to build a plot around, but there it is.

Well, okay, "perfectly," is maybe overstating it, but as well as could be expected if not slightly better. In some ways the book reminded me of a sitcom. Joey is not going to unexpectedly die in a mugging on the way home from Central Perk. We know things will work out fine and we watch to see our reassurances played out.

Who knows if Ms. Drabble had the will to do something awful to her characters, but she certainly didn't have the desire. Yet somehow the book works on the strength of its sensitive, smart, and funny narrator. There's real charm in how everything that should be a negative she somehow twists into a positive. Having an illegitimate child in the 1960s? No problem, because now the narrator can love. Being a single mother? She can enter into a mutually beneficial arrangement with a friend. Telling the parents? Someone else can do it.

The book is quite aware of its positivity and a great percentage of the words are spent inside the narrator's mind pondering her situation and how, though it might clash with both the staid conventions of an older generation and the freer beliefs of her own, it is nevertheless a good one. The point seems to be that she can have a child on her own terms and still be happy and successful and free. As a political point, it's now an old one (if not a little silly given we're talking about a profoundly privileged character), but a great deal of the book seems intended to present a different side of the more familiar depictions of Swinging London. The narrator is clearly of an age and social standing where she should, like her friends, use the era's hedonism to liberate herself yet instead chooses to do it by redefining domesticity and motherhood and love. I feel, I think, reassured.

Exhibit 1.1.23

2011-01-12T17:11:00.006-06:00

Umm...

I'm firmly on the side that believes violent political rhetoric is a problem because it lowers the discourse, is unworthy of the officeholders, and conflates valid philosophical disagreements with war, not because such rhetoric--no matter how reprehensible--is likely to be responsible for any particular action. Still, I think today's Kansas City Star headline is maybe a little problematic:

I know we're dealing with a headline written by some editor and not political speech but still--nobody saw a problem with this? And I don't just mean because of what happened this weekend, I mean because of perhaps the biggest news story to come out of Kansas in the last decade:

"Abortion Doctor Gunned Down at Kansas Church" -- Fox News

Yep, that was less than two years ago, and the bill referenced in that headline is in direct response to this doctor's practice (despite his, you know, terrible and cowardly murder by a zealot).

Shockingly, the headline has been changed to "Conservatives Push Plan to Restrict Abortion" for the online version of the article.

And so, yeah, I think some of the reaction to the Arizona shooting has been a little tasteless by some of the left (and doubly so by certain defensive voices on the right), but I don't think we can fault anyone who says that maybe all of us--politicians, media, people who like to argue while drinking like myself--might want to step away from certain language and metaphors for a time with the hope we leave them behind altogether.

Exhibit 1.1.22

2011-01-11T18:45:00.003-06:00

Dude's Lyrical like Bernie Taupin

I think we're all sick of language-driven novels published by obscure presses winning Pulitzers. Okay, so that never happens. Bully for the Pulitzer people and for Mr. Harding whose book is as remarkable as Marilynne Robinson says on the cover which is both a good thing and a bad thing.

And what's remarkable about it is the writing. You really can't talk about the book without talking about its lyricism which is, on some level, a detriment. I mean, I love lyrical, and there's certainly something wondrous--though always in a strictly realistic way--to justify it here. Of course, there's also just a lot of characters sitting and thinking and talking which all gets the same sparkly brush. Here, I'll flip to a random page and grab the first sentence:

My goodness, I am made from planets and wood, diamonds and orange peels, now and then, here and there; the iron in my blood was once the blade of a Roman plow; peel back my scalp and you will see my cranium covered in the scrimshaw carved by an ancient sailor who never suspected that he was whittling at my skull--no my blood is a Roman plow, my bones are being etched by men with names that mean sea and wrestler and ocean rider and the pictures they are making are pictures of northern stars at different seasons, and the man keeping my blood straight as it splits the soil is named Lucian and he will plant wheat, and I cannot concentrate on this apple, this apple, and the only thing common to all of this is that I feel sorrow so deep, it must be love, and they are upset because while they are carving and plowing they are troubled by visions of trying to pick apples from barrels.

Ha! I swear that was random. Honestly, I was delighted when I saw the page. Anyway, I couldn't have picked a better example of what makes this book awesome and, I hate to say it, admirably overwrought. It's pretty much that all the way through and at times it's beautiful and awesome--describing the electricity of a seizure, the imagination of a child--and at others it's forced with the unworthy task of the book's plot.

This maybe is part of my problem: the past is not, in itself, magical. I'm going to stop before I go off on some rant about nostalgia except to say that no one would write about their office job the way Harding writes about being a traveling salesman. It's maddening to see such language applied not to the truly magical but to simply the past, as if beautiful things only existed between 1840 and 1962. And during those years, everything was equally beautiful--a sugar-glazed ham is identically as sublime as pulling a tooth with a pair of pliers.

It's a minor complaint that one that kept me from really loving the book. I'm not even sure I'd say I liked it though I admired it a great deal (I'm obviously hedging. Am I the only one comfortable for having a category for art that I can like without, you know, liking?). So, in the end, an absolutely beautiful, marvelously written book and certainly one deserving of its accolades. But, at least to me, the book reaches for something more than just beauty and falls short. There's a story about fathers and sons here, one about running away from a legacy, one about the painful gains and losses over a lifetime, but it's all too slippery with rosewater.

Exhibit 1.1.21

2011-01-10T09:55:00.002-06:00

Huh

When McEwan's book reaches its sudden conclusion--as spoiler-free as possible: a creepy family achieves maximum creepiness, somewhere V.C. Andrews blushes--it's difficult to see past the shock of it all to any greater point. And that, I suppose, is the point, even if it's not a very good one. Don't get me wrong, it's a plenty interesting and insightful book--language, imagery, etc. all top-notch--but the final act it builds toward is achingly inevitable from the first pages and so it's a matter of simply waiting it out. Of course, there's a shocking act at the beginning too and even the first sentence--something from the narrator about not having killed his own father--seems needlessly incendiary as when that moment comes, there's nothing to suggest the character did kill his father nor that anyone thought he did. It's the literary equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater then, after everyone's maimed on the floor, putting on a pornographic movie just to be a dick.

(Or is it like that? Is anything like that?)

So much shock, so little of interest behind it all. Maybe this book once said something about the depravity of British society (or at least the children) or maybe--likely--I'm missing something, but I set this book down feeling sad that someone so talented had wasted so much time aiming so low. Shock ages poorly, is the problem, and so absolutely it's ghastly that this book involves incest but, you know what, so do about half the episodes of Law and Order: SVU. And yep, the events proceeding it are wonderfully described by a sensitive and complex character in the 1st person, but that blackhole of a moment is so strong that nobody else gets to be anything other than a scandalization-bot. Seemingly no other character has a choice, and those who have very good reasons to be disinterested or disturbed by it find themselves involved because this book is about a creepy family and if they're ever going to be the creepiest family then everyone's got to be on-board. Why they'd want to be isn't important. What is important is that every reader closes the book feeling ashamed because we're all implicated in it by how lovely the writing is. Well, I don't care. This isn't Lolita and dirty is not an emotion.

McEwan is better than this book, thank god. Apparently someone reminded him that--despite what a lot of immature writers seem to think--being shocking doesn't mean being more honest and usually it means the opposite.

Exhibit 1.1.20

2011-01-06T14:16:00.001-06:00

The Social Network in Stock Photos

Featuring a gorilla as Mark Zuckerberg. In seven acts.

Act 1

"I need to do something substantial in order to get the attention of the clubs. They're exclusive and fun, and they lead to a better life."

Act 2

"We're ranking girls."

Act 3

"As for the charges, I believe I deserve some recognition from this board."

Act 4

"I'm talking about taking the entire social experience of college and putting it online."

Act 5

"It's like a Final Club except we're the president."

Act 6

"You're gonna blame me because you were the business head of the company and you made a bad business deal with your own company?"

Act 7

"If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook."

The End

♫Baby, You're a Rich Man♫

Exhibit 1.1.19

2011-01-05T20:57:00.004-06:00

Why Not

So, yes, more book posts. I'm sorry. I'm reading a lot, what can I say. It's either that or contemplate why the tornado siren is going off. My theories: either it's a test or God intends to finish what he started in Arkansas.

If it helps, I thought this book was fantastic. It's smart and original and funny and, basically, everything the last book wasn't (well, fine, the last book was smart. Maybe I should have gone with clever). This is the first Mary Robison I've read which I find slightly strange as it's a name that feels really familiar to me, just one of those names you hear a lot if you deal in literary fiction. I might have read a story or two some where but none are coming to mind and so I suppose she's nothing but a name and the vague impression that she's Amy Hempel-y which is a good thing to be.

Why Did I Ever is told in 536 chapters (Well, "sections" anyway. If I have a gripe with the book it's that these mostly numbered but occasionally titled sections are further broken up into chapters, as if without this the reader might be fooled into thinking these were short stories, as if any book needs two levels of numbering). Anyway, some representative ones:

141

That fat man driving around with his little pooch? Now why don't I know him or someone like him? That man, I bet, could make me very happy.

365

Hollis is perched on one of the seats in the breakfast nook as we come in. He's eating a pecan roll and reading the Book of Revelation. "Whoomp!" he says. "Did you ever know about this? 'There will be no more night.'"

There are longer chapters though none more than a page or so and some as short as a single word. Despite the fragmentation, the book does work around a cohesive plot and an established set of characters. The narrator is a middle-aged woman working as a screenwriter for a film studio with two children only slightly more troubled than she is herself. It's never sentimental and, despite the darkness, shockingly funny in little, real ways that always seem impossible to me. These kind of life-on-the-brink stories are done to death but rarely do they feel this fraught which is a credit to the form. These short chapters aren't a gimmick, they're a telling representation of the scattered thoughts of a woman in just enough control to get them in the right order but to see her own narrative.

As a teacher--not a reader--it's strange to read a book like this that seems so clearly suited to imparting one lesson. I mean, there's great dialogue and description and characterization and whatever else we're all supposed to be doing. And it's formally interesting and well-written in its own stark way. Plenty to say about that. Really though, it's a book about voice and though the narrator reaches no great conclusion, it's terribly sad to leave her.

Exhibit 1.1.18

2011-01-04T13:04:00.001-06:00

So Long

I've got this theory with exactly no evidence to support it but it goes something like this: everything we thought of as an MFA story was really a William Maxwell story because a William Maxwell story was a New Yorker story. These things--an MFA story, a New Yorker story--have all shifted, of course, but the influence lingers in older journal editors and writing professors who have theories on what's good and bad, what's possible and what isn't.

For 40 years--notably coinciding with the rise of the MFA and therefore the rise of the short story--William Maxwell served as the fiction editor of the New Yorker publishing Cheever and Updike and O'Connor and all the rest. If we can assume his considerable influence in the literary world trickled down--and continues to still--Maxwell's personal tastes were the bar which young writers had to clear. It's not very useful to even attempt to define these things, but since people still bemoan the MFA story, Maxwell seems as likely a culprit as anyone. Unless you like these stories, in which case he's a sort of hero standing up for the well-crafted sentence and the understated emotion.

Whatever. I don't really care either way except that when reading So Long, See You Tomorrow it was hard not to see the type of overly polished and nostalgic navelgazing I used to hate when reading through the middle years of short story anthologies from the last century. And it's not that I still hate this work--nor that I like it any better either--just that I'm past the point where I know what to say when confronted by it. I've never developed a vocabulary for intelligently describing how something can be well-wrought yet lifeless, interesting yet treated blandly. Nor do I know why sometimes I like it and sometimes I don't (though a sense of humor usually helps).

And so I don't really know what to say about Maxwell's book. It's not that it's bad, it isn't, just that its careful portrait of three shifting families during the 1920s somehow fails to feel like anything more than the author's working out some old and remarkably tiny guilt (in fact, Maxwell admits as much in a Paris Review interview here). To the book's credit, it is not without an awareness of how inessential the narrator--the unnecessarily guilty feeling boy on the periphery of a love triangle and murder--is to the actual plot of the book, but it's still like listening in to a particularly well-spoken person's therapy session. What does it mean that this event meant something to the narrator? Why does he still think of it all these years later? What can he now realize with the benefit of experience?

Naturally, because this is that kind of story, these questions don't really get answered and nor do they need to be. They're not interesting questions. The event matters because we're reading a book about it. He thinks about it because it was a love-triangle that ended in murder. Experience teaches him nothing that any one of the other characters couldn't have told us at the time. It's frustrating because a book that should be about the impossibility of love at a time when marriage meant something else and divorce was nigh impossible is instead about elderly malaise which drips through every sentence, every character, every workshop story, until the only thing any one can write about is how sort of maybe sometimes perhaps without knowing why we might kind of feel things.

Okay, not really. We can also write about people with crazy jobs. What if there was a blood factory!

Exhibit 1.1.17

2011-01-01T15:23:00.002-06:00

Your Resolution...

...is to beat that high score in BurgerTime. You have a year. Go.

Exhibit 1.1.16

2010-12-29T13:21:00.003-06:00

Things

* (mostly of the promotional variety)

* Sorry.

* Look, I took a new picture of Borgstrom's Explanations:

* Doesn't it look nice? Don't you want one? Don't you think my parents' carpet looks properly vacuumed?

* Speaking of Explanations, it made Sherrie Flick's list of the year's best books in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Very proud of Andrew and very grateful to Miss Flick.

* In other Cupboard good news, the fine folks at FlashFiction.Net reviewed Joshua Cohen's volume here and had nice things to say about it and the other pamphlets. Grateful to them as well.

* And, while I'm at it, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Cohen's Witz is on a number of year's best lists itself. Pick it up from Dalkey.

* O, well, now I can't stop. Lots of similar attention for Chris Higgs's The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney which you can and should get from SATOR here.

* Two quick things from me. One, American Short Fiction's blog is doing a really cool Atlas project for all of their web stories. You should check them all out and mine for "In Space, Smiling" is right here. It's such a good idea that I wish I'd thought of it. If only The Cupboard had a blog. Alas.

* Two, We Who Are About to Die asked stamp stories contributors to review their own story. Mine is here. I became pretty worried when I read the other reviews (like Dave's) and felt like I completely missed the point. Still, there it is. Enjoy.

* To make up for all of that, please enjoy this clip from The Critic:

Exhibit 1.1.15

2010-12-28T21:07:00.004-06:00

Not About Baseball

No, seriously, Salter's book is not about baseball. Don't let anyone tell you differently. If you see someone's copy and there is a dog-eared section, it's not because that's the part with the great story about Satchel Paige striking out Herbert Hoover.

I liked this well enough, I guess. I don't know, it's just a lot of sex and France so it's hard to really dislike it, and it takes that rhapsodic realism that I liked in Coetzee's book and trumps it by about a hundred gleeful uses of the word 'prick.' As pure language, it's actually really remarkable as it's all graceful fragments that shift perspective and tense without Salter ever seeming in less than total control.

I'm less enthralled with it as a story. It's hard to know how much of this is what's come after and how much is what came before, but as a story Salter's book is firmly in the "rich ex-pats try to have more meaningful experiences in Europe but realize they cannot emigrate from themselves" camp. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a bad sign when your book might best be described as "if Henry James and Henry Miller had a child who wrote a book." I mean, Henry James-Miller can write, but still. It's a bad sign.

Okay, there's a little more going on than that. The narration is nicely odd (it's a book of intimate moments narrated by an older guy who was present for exactly none of them), but it doesn't ever do much with that obsession and so the plot never matches the transcendence of its language. When it comes to its inevitable shrug of an ending, it's hard to feel like anything real was lost, at least for the two male characters who, like us, always knew where this was headed. The local girl, who they kept it from, has the most to lose, but somehow no one ever tells that story.

My copy's introduction bemoans this book being treated as only a minor classic, but it's hard to see it as anything else. It's a good, stylish read if one can keep their monocle from falling out, and it's almost daring enough to last.

Exhibit 1.1.14

2010-12-23T20:41:00.002-06:00

The Street of Crocodiles

Bruno Schulz's book has been recommended to me innumerable times over the years, so I'm glad I finally had an excuse to pick it up. I probably shouldn't have needed one, but it's one of those books that was championed by so many different people with so many different aesthetics that I couldn't help but not read it. Not on purpose, really, just that I could never quite find the right mental bookshelf for it when some would say the writing was beautiful, others would say it was my kind of strange, and still others would talk about the characters or the history. This problem comes up for a lot of us, I imagine. Before reading a book or seeing a movie we want to pre-understand it, at least to some degree. Or, maybe, we'd just as soon go in blind but that's rarely an option. Even if we know nothing about the work other than the person telling us about it--or the website where we hear of it, or the company that's put it out--that's still enough of a clue to make us ask Well, what's it about? This we ask because we already think we have some idea of what it is.

With The Street of Crocodiles, I'd gotten enough mixed messages that at some point not thinking about it was easier than thinking about it, at least until I actually read it. So I read it. Now I think I understand why it was always presented to me in so many diverse ways. It really is that wide a book--a fantastic childhood remembrance, a beautifully rendered physical world, a mythical reconstruction of a father figure. I honestly can't think of any English language equivalent, certainly not one from 1934. The best I can do is to ask you to imagine Borges and Thomas Wolfe got together and wrote a short story collection that's also maybe a novel. There, I hope that's clear.

The attraction for me is really the father. The book is told through the son's eyes, but he's really the string keeping it grounded in some sort of nostalgic realism. Whenever there's a description of spices or relatives or the streets in this small Polish town--and there are, a lot--it's him. But the father--he of the bird marriages and campaign for tailor dummies' rights--is where the book is most alive for me. Yes, I suppose it's my kind of strange, but anyone who recommended it for other reasons wouldn't have been wrong either. The translation is quite beautiful and there's something compelling about this town whether or not anything absurd is happening. It's realistic and it's magical. It's lush and it's metaphysical. It's sweet and it's sad--made even more so by the course of history generally and Shulz's life story specifically--and, I don't know, I recommend it.

Bonus: Apparently the titular story was adapted into what, I gather, is a somewhat famous stop-motion film. I haven't watched it yet, but I think I'll do that...now:

Exhibit 1.1.13

2010-12-22T11:20:00.003-06:00

SANTAS

I previously displayed my parents' decor here, and, if anything, over the holidays their house becomes even more of the place it is. There is not a flat surface that cannot be covered with hand-painted reindeer, holly-covered tea pots, and stocking-shaped jars full of candy canes. I'm not against this at all. I like candy canes and unusually shaped jars as much as the next reveller.

This year, the family has added this clever display:

Look, it's a framed doily with our name on it, a single candle resting in a bowl of potpourri, a wooden Santa, and, just off screen, a Santa holding several American flags. (Ed note: I'm sorry, I just couldn't put that one on the internet. My parents aren't those people they just...I don't know...they like crafts? come from Nebraska? were gifted one Tea Partying Santa that basically says Suck it, other countries, Santa's ours?). And of course there's the very clever little Scrabble display which could just as easily be:

Or maybe:

And the classic:

My mom threw out "ANT ASS," but I think the winner, done with surreptitiously acquired extra Scrabble pieces, is:

Santa is an American which means Santa is down with free speech. Here he's showing his support for 2 Live Crew's album As Nasty As They Wanna Be. Now I know why I got that for Christmas in 1990. And the real album, mind you, not the one with "Funk Shop." Word, Santa. Word.

Exhibit 1.1.12

2010-12-21T15:12:00.007-06:00

Sonora Review

So since I've been home I've been reading a lot of books for an upcoming class, but my attention keeps getting pulled away by the new Sonora Review. You should go order it and read it and support them because, damnit, it's just too awesome. I gather from the website this hand-bound model is a limited edition done by Spork Press*. I can easily say it's as nicely put together as any literary journal I've ever been in.

And the work inside makes it worth it. I haven't yet read everything, but current Cupboard author Andrew Borgstrom is in there with a great story, as is Kim Gek Lin Short whose prose poems are from the same world as her chapbook Run which I wrote about here. I'm not positive, but I think these are going to be in the book China Cowboy from Tarpaulin Sky. That's a book you're going to want.

Then there's nonfiction from Brian Oliu "about" the old Nintendo game Double Dribble. I love that game, and this series (or whatever it is). Every so often I go watch the videos being made for these, especially this one:

My piece is mostly notable for featuring a character not named Miss Hampster. Once at a reading I mistakenly said this name the first time and then had to keep using it subsequently. It was hard.

* Initially I didn't know what Sonora meant when they credited "Spork" but only because I'm an idiot. I've seen Spork Press stuff before and it's always this nice looking.

Exhibit 1.1.11

2010-12-19T10:20:00.001-06:00

Perfectly Reasonable Questions about Babies

These are things I've had to ask in the last two days thanks to the nephew, Charlie. Charlie, by the way, has a blog of his own right here.

* Does the baby count on a dinner reservation?

* Wait, why do we think he's too hot? Are we sure babies can be hot?

* I know you said I don't have to hold his head anymore, but I won't hurt him if I hold it, right?

* So when he spits up I just stab his face with this towel? I mean dab, dab his face.

* I know it's his toy, but don't you think the dog would enjoy it more?

* Have you read that Lorrie Moore story "Terrific Mother"?

* Have you reconsidered calling him Chaz? I like Chaz, Chaz likes Chaz. We all agree on this, right?

* Do you think if we tie his right hand behind his back we can turn him into a left-handed middle reliever?

* Why are you doing that? Are you sure you should do that? I don't have any kids, but I'm not sure you should do that.

Exhibit 1.1.10

2010-12-17T14:08:00.007-06:00

Top Gun for the NES

So I've been playing a lot of old Nintendo games in a fashion that is almost surely illegal (for someone), and I'd sort have forgotten how painfully difficult and arbitrary many of these games are. None more so than the original Top Gun. No, not even BurgerTime, a game where your life is ended by walking eggs and sausages.

The absurdity begins when the first mission screen appears to inform you that this mission is only training for the next mission. Okay, you think. Training, cool. I remember being trained at that fast food restaurant. I learned how to make fries and nobody died. But this is different. Planes shoot at you. Missiles turn your screen blood red. You run out of ammo. And you start to think, Are all these pilots I'm killing also in training? Does the last of us alive get to go on to Mission 2: Inform All the Trainees' Widows? This is not at all like how they did it at Hardy's.

(Although it is how the military trained Bourne).

But then you make it through and you've only died twice and everything seems fine. The screen flashes "Landing Sequence" and you think, Thank god. After all, they wouldn't make landing the plane harder than dodging a missile traveling faster than the speed of sound. In case you've never played the game, let me fill you in: they made landing the plane harder than dodging a missile traveling faster than the speed of sound. It's terrifying the first time you have to do it and then every time after. Or at least I assume. I've never had to do it twice. No one has. You do it once and then die. For most of us, Top Gun the video game is a Kafkaesque experience of dying during a mission that consists of training for a mission that does not exist.

Should you somehow make it out of the first mission--say, you had one guy left when you crashed your plane into the Persian Gulf 20 feet from your aircraft carrier because you didn't understand the direction Up! Up! Down!--you still won't get another chance to land the plane. No, you won't because you'll die before then, probably because you ran out of fuel after failing to execute the mid-air refueling sequence which is exactly like landing the plane only harder. It's as if video game designers watched Top Gun and thought, Yeah, the dogfights were cool but when those guys refuel--holy shit!

They don't make games like this anymore. You know why? Because to make games like this would mean having the protagonist take a break from shooting terrorists in order to walk into a restaurant, order a meal, and then eat the meal in such a manor that he always ended up stabbing himself to death with his fork.